Road to Isla Negra
The Road to Isla Negra
William O’Daly’s poetic response to four decades spent translating Pablo Neruda’s poetry takes readers on a pilgrimage to Don Pablo’s home by the sea. Time breaks free from linear constraints amidst O’Daly’s lines that intertwine spiritual and physical planes. Paired with Galen Garwood’s stunning photographs, the tension between what was, what is, and what could be makes this collaboration between two masters a must-read.
“William O’Daly has been a patient and dedicated poet-translator for forty years. In these poems paying homage to Pablo Neruda, sweetness meets strength as his tender and muscular music leads us on. I welcome these poems with unfettered enthusiasm and gratitude.”
— Sam Hamill, author of Habitation: Collected Poems (Lost Horse Press, 2014) and Founding Editor of Copper Canyon Press
“William O’Daly, master translator of Neruda’s later work, joins Don Pablo here on The Road to Isla Negra, with dazzling songs of friendship, sadness, and the sea. Neruda Presente!”
— Dennis Maloney, author of Listening to Tao Yuan Ming (Glass Lyre Press, 2015)
“Part homage, part elegy, part visitation, William O’Daly’s The Road to Isla Negra brings Neruda into our lives — fresh, transparent, and searching for the Chile he left and loved and returned to over and over, until finally, it becomes a song, a chant that O’Daly sings until we hear him, again, on the first morning on that beach with Matilde. Galen Garwood’s accompanying photographs make me think of the beautiful book honoring Robinson Jeffers, Jeffers Country — photographs with Jeffers’ poems. This is as close as you will get to finding Neruda on the page — now that Neruda has surrendered his poems to Chile, and to his many readers beyond its borders. O’Daly has devoted a lifetime to Neruda, as translator, as champion, and now, as the fine poet he is.”
— Shaun T. Griffin, author of Woodsmoke, Wind, and the Peregrine (University of Nevada Press, 2008)
“A book that is so rich and full of understanding for another human being. One feels ‘let in’ to witness a relationship that is deep, compassionate, and experienced at a level — even a different realm! — which is unique and uncommon. The photographs by Galen Garwood, which complement the poems, are beautiful! They enrich the whole experience even further.”
— Yvonne Higgins Leach, author of Another Autumn (WordTech Communications, 2014), from an Amazon.com review
