The Hands of the Day

The Hands of the Day

This first complete English edition of Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda’s Las manos del día, The Hands of Day, is published bilingually with translations by noted Neruda scholar William O’Daly. The poems celebrate everyday labor and declare Neruda’s wish to take part in the great human making of he day. O’Daly writes in his introduction: “Above all else in The Hands of Day, the beloved Chilean poet celebrates the transformative powers of others’ hands, of those who build with wood or metal or who harvest the grain or the fish, of those who make the wine, and of the powerful hands he entreats to help him change the profile of the planets, to shape the triangular stars the traveler needs. He also meditates on the role of the writer … [on] focusing [one’s] energies on creating work and lives of greater integrity, and he implicates himself among those artists who carry like a ‘small beast’ on their shoulders the capacity for self-delusion.” Self-effacing and wise, empathic and forlorn, Neruda ultimately leaves the reader with a grand vision of hope for humanity.

“The Hands of Day is the seventh bilingual translation of the poetry of Chile-born diplomat and political activist Pablo Neruda (1904-1973). Sixty-seven lyric poems are presented in both their original Spanish and in English. At times the verse dips away from the mundanities of daily life and into the wonders existing just beyond the senses. A poignant collection, tinged with the depth of human emotion and a “must-have” for anyone with an interest in Neruda’s classic works. “The Hands of the Days”: by the accident of the rose / the hour is born, irascible / or yellow. / Thin layer of volcano, petal of hatred, / carnivorous throat, / such is a day, and the next one / is tenderly, / yes resolutely, a wedding song.”
— Midwest Book Review

“Forty years after its original publication in Spanish, Las manos del día (The Hands of Day) has at last been given the full and complete translation into English it deserves, by Neruda’s most sensitive and finest translator, William O’Daly. This publication event should be cause for celebration among Neruda fans and poetry lovers everywhere. O’Daly’s translation strikes just the right notes, deftly and delicately conveying (as in six previous and equally magnificent volumes) Neruda’s incantatory music, his rhythms, and his vast emotional scope, giving the master’s work a new and vital life. This is essential reading for the 21st century.”
— IVE, Amazon Review