Books like Odes to Common Things

Naming the simple things of the natural world, Neruda’s odes address everything, for everyone. With his painstakingly unadorned language, Neruda aims to capture all facets of everyday life within his odes, in a manner not unlike that of the realist photographer. Be his subject alive or inanimate, an atom or a hummingbird, Neruda considers it with care from many angles, wanting to neither embellish nor simplify it. The naturalist project is explicitly democratic in its intentions: the poet often makes reference to his desire to be read and understood by everyone. Consisting of many swift, short lines, the odes encourage the reader, whoever they might be, to become lost for a moment in contemplating common subjects that they normally take for granted.