Description
Pablo Neruda was a wonderful poet that published "Ode to Typography" in 1964.
Below are photographs I've taken to respond to his poem.
Below are photographs I've taken to respond to his poem.
Long, severe, vertical,
letters,
cast
in pure
line,
erect
as the ship’s
mast
in the middle
of the page
full
of confusion and turbulence,
algebraic
Bodoni,
finished
letters,
fine-lined
as greyhounds,
obedient to the white rectangle
of Geometry,
Elzevirian
vowels
coined
in the slender steel
of the waterfront shop,
in Flanders, fluted
in the North,
cyphers
of the anchor,
Aldine characters,
firm as
the sea
stature
of Venice,
in whose mother waters,
like a leaning
sail,
italics navigate
curving the alphabet:
the air
of the oceanic
discoverers
bent down
forever the outline of script.
From medieval hands to your eyes advanced this N,
this double 8,
this J this R of regal and rain.
There they were shaped like
teeth,
nails,
metallic hammers of language.
They beat each letter, erected it, a small black statue on the whiteness,
a petal or a starry foot of thought taking the form of a swollen river,
rushing to a sea of people
with all the alphabet illuminating the outlet.
with all the alphabet illuminating the outlet.
The hearts, the eyes of men became filled with
letters,
letters,
messages,
words,
and the passing or permanent wind
raised mad or sacred books.
Beneath the newly written pyramids the letter was alive,
the alphabet burning,
the vowels,
the consonants
like curved flowers.
The paper’s eyes, which looked at men seeking
their gifts,
their history,
their loves;
extending the accumulated treasure;
spreading suddenly the slowness of wisdom over the printer’s word
like a deck of cards;
all the secret humus of the
ages,
song,
memories,
revolt,
blind parable,
suddenly were
fecundity,
granary,
Letters,
letters that traveled and kindled,
letters letters that sailed and conquered,
letters that awakened and climbed,
letters that liberated,
letters dove-shaped that flew,
letters scarlet in the snow;
punctuation,
roads,
buildings of letters,
and Villon and Berceo,
troubadours of memory
faintly written on leather as on battle drum,
arrived at the spacious nave of books,
at the sailing typography.
Yet the letter was not beauty alone, but life, peace for the soldier;
it went down to the solitudes of the mine, and the miner read the hard and clandestine leaflet,
hid it in the folds of the secret heart and above, on earth,
he was different and different was his word.
it went down to the solitudes of the mine, and the miner read the hard and clandestine leaflet,
hid it in the folds of the secret heart and above, on earth,
he was different and different was his word.
The letter was the mother of the new banners;
the letters begot the terrestrial stars and the song,
the ardent hymn that unites peoples;
from one letter added to another letter and another,
from people to people went bearing its sonorous authority,
and welling in the throats of men it imposed the clarity of the song.
the letters begot the terrestrial stars and the song,
the ardent hymn that unites peoples;
from one letter added to another letter and another,
from people to people went bearing its sonorous authority,
and welling in the throats of men it imposed the clarity of the song.
But typography,
let me celebrate you in the purity of your pure profiles,
in the retort of the letter O,
in the fresh flower vase of the Greek Y,
in the Q of Quevedo,
(how can my poetry pass before that letter and not feel the ancient shudder of the dying sage?),
in the lily multiplied of the V of victory,
in the E echeloned to climb to heaven in the Z
with its thunderbolt face,
in the orange shaped P.
let me celebrate you in the purity of your pure profiles,
in the retort of the letter O,
in the fresh flower vase of the Greek Y,
in the Q of Quevedo,
(how can my poetry pass before that letter and not feel the ancient shudder of the dying sage?),
in the lily multiplied of the V of victory,
in the E echeloned to climb to heaven in the Z
with its thunderbolt face,
in the orange shaped P.
Love
I love the letters of your hair,
the U of your glance,
the S of your figure.
In the leaves of the young springtime sparkles the diamantine alphabet;
emeralds write your name with the fresh initials of dew.
My love your hair profound as jungle or dictionary covers me with its totality of red language.
In everything, in the wake of the worm,
one reads, in the rose,
one reads, in the roots
are filled with letters twisted by the dampness of the forest
and the heavens of the Black Isle,
in the night,
I read,
read in the cold firmament of the coast,
intense diaphanous with beauty unfurled,
with capital and lower case stars and exclamations of frozen diamond;
I read,
read in the night of austral Chile,
lost in the celestial solitudes of heaven,
as in a book I read all the adventures and in the grass
I read,
read the green,
the sandy typography of the rustic earth,
I read the ships, the faces and the hands,
I read your heart
where live entwined the provincial initial of your name
and the reef of my surnames,
I read your forehead,
I read your hair
and in the jasmine the hidden letters
elevate the unceasing springtime until I decipher
the buried punctuation the poppy and the scarlet letter of summer:
they are the exact flowers of my song.
I love the letters of your hair,
the U of your glance,
the S of your figure.
In the leaves of the young springtime sparkles the diamantine alphabet;
emeralds write your name with the fresh initials of dew.
My love your hair profound as jungle or dictionary covers me with its totality of red language.
In everything, in the wake of the worm,
one reads, in the rose,
one reads, in the roots
are filled with letters twisted by the dampness of the forest
and the heavens of the Black Isle,
in the night,
I read,
read in the cold firmament of the coast,
intense diaphanous with beauty unfurled,
with capital and lower case stars and exclamations of frozen diamond;
I read,
read in the night of austral Chile,
lost in the celestial solitudes of heaven,
as in a book I read all the adventures and in the grass
I read,
read the green,
the sandy typography of the rustic earth,
I read the ships, the faces and the hands,
I read your heart
where live entwined the provincial initial of your name
and the reef of my surnames,
I read your forehead,
I read your hair
and in the jasmine the hidden letters
elevate the unceasing springtime until I decipher
the buried punctuation the poppy and the scarlet letter of summer:
they are the exact flowers of my song.
But, when writing unfolds its roses, and the letter its essential gardening,
when you read the old and the new words, the truths and the explorations,
I beg a thought for the one who orders type,
and raises them,
for the one who sets for the linotypist and his lamp
like a pilot over the waves of language ordering winds and foam,
shadow and stars in the book:
man and steel once more united
against the nocturnal wing of
mystery,
sailing,
perforating,
composing.
when you read the old and the new words, the truths and the explorations,
I beg a thought for the one who orders type,
and raises them,
for the one who sets for the linotypist and his lamp
like a pilot over the waves of language ordering winds and foam,
shadow and stars in the book:
man and steel once more united
against the nocturnal wing of
mystery,
sailing,
perforating,
composing.
Typography, I am only a poet and you are the flowery play of reason, the movement of the
chess bishops of intelligence.
You rest neither night nor winter,
you circulate in the veins of our anatomy
and if you sleep,
flying during some night
or strike
or fatigue
or break of linotype,
you go down anew to the book or newspaper
like a cloud of birds to their nest.
You return to the system,
to the unappealable order of intelligence.
Letters continue to fall
like precise rain along my way.
you circulate in the veins of our anatomy
and if you sleep,
flying during some night
or strike
or fatigue
or break of linotype,
you go down anew to the book or newspaper
like a cloud of birds to their nest.
You return to the system,
to the unappealable order of intelligence.
Letters continue to fall
like precise rain along my way.
Oh,
letters of all that lives and dies,
letters
of light,
of moon,
of silence,
of water,
I love you,
and in you
I gather not only thought and combat,
but your
dress,
senses,
and sounds:
A
of glorious avena,
T
of trigo and tower,
and M
like your name of manzana.
letters of all that lives and dies,
letters
of light,
of moon,
of silence,
of water,
I love you,
and in you
I gather not only thought and combat,
but your
dress,
senses,
and sounds:
A
of glorious avena,
T
of trigo and tower,
and M
like your name of manzana.
