Maremoto Seaquake.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara

Maremoto is a buried treasure, as rich and precious as the sea it celebrates. The poems that compose the collection were written in 1969 and published in a limited edition in 1970, with woodcuts by Swedish artist Carin Oldfelt Hjertonsson. However, because so few copies existed, the book fell into oblivion, hardly figuring in Neruda bibliographies. In 1990 the collection was found in Neruda's home in Santiago and published in Chile. The White Pine edition, complete with woodcuts, is the first bilingual version.

Neruda adored the sea, spending much of his time at Isla Negra, on the Chilean coast. He loved to walk along the sand and explore the wealth of shells and other objects washed up by the waves. Maremoto is a tribute to the beauty and vitality of the ocean, whose fruits nourish and sustain us, whose sounds and smells calm us. For Neruda, the sea is a symbol of eternity, of constant renewal, for unlike the fish it offers up, "it does not die; it is not for sale." Living beings exist in time, but the sea is timeless, immune to the material deterioration that eventually claims us all.

The sea conceals and reveals the enigmas of life. In Neruda's hands, the creatures of the water become metaphors for complex human emotions. The sea urchin, "wet, secret, and hostile" is like love - alluring, flagile, delicious, and prickly. The picoroco, a kind of Chilean shellfish with a sturdy, seemingly impenetrable shell, is like the human soul, tender and delicate; it reaches out, "desperate in the...