Neruda is easily one of the 20th centuries greatest poets. The Heights of Macchu Picchu is an excellent poem (Tarn's translation is a good one). It weakens a bit towards the end, but the first 2/3 of the poems is wonderful stuff. And Robert Pring-Mill prefaces this edition with a great essay that really takes you into the meaning of Neruda's poem.

Pablo Neruda, born in Chile 1904, is one of the greatest Latin American Poets to have lived. The Heights of Macchu Picchu (considered by some to be his finest poem) was inspired by his journey to this famed ruined Peruvian Inca city. These poems take on a progressive journey within both the past of Latin America and the roots of the poet himself.

Lovers and devoted students of poetry will be caught up in Neruda's poetic power, hopefully capturing the quintessence of this great poets mind. Others, like myself, who are occasional readers of poetry, may need to reread his words, but, through the rereading, Neruda's own spirit will descend into you mind.

Pablo Neruda speaks to the heart and struggle of us all, as he writes, "How many times in wintry streets, or in a bus, a boat a dusk,.... in the very lair of human pleasure, have I wanted to pause and look for the eternal, unfathomable truth's filament I'd fingered once in stone, or in the flash of a kiss released." Highly Recommended.

Pablo Neruda must have written a thousand gorgeous and soul-shaking poems on everything from socks to multinational corporations, but in my (limited) experience, this is his most amazing work. He threads together a wide scope of metaphors-- corn, gloves, roses, lightning, streams, autobuses--as he searches through life for meaning and truth. Sounds like a worn-out, pretentious topic? Think again...Neruda doesn't indulge in philosophical navel-gazing, but delves into the most earthy, mundane, yet painful details of life in his quest. He encounters not a simple answer but the revelation of past tragedy, and a role for himself in bringing about the truth of justice. The poem's beauty may not hit like lightning at first--it must be absorbed bit by bit.

Although I must have read Poem 10 (Antigua America, novia sumergida) fifty times, it always sends chills down my spine and sends me thousands of feet high into the Andes. The Heights of Macchu Picchu has comforted me when I felt lonely, helped me write my college essays, and helped me see my future plans as worthwhile instead of idealistic mush. Anyone concerned with the history of Latin America, social justice, nature, or the works of Neruda should read this poem.

Founding Editor of Cape Editions and the Cape Goliard Press, Nathaniel Tarn has published more than twenty-five books and his writings have ben translated into over a dozen languages. Selected Poems: 1950-2000 is a 347 page retrospective compilation of his verse drawing from his Random House, Penguin, New Directions, and Black Sparrow anthologies and collections, as well as from more limited and small press editions which are mostly out of print. A major innovator in American poetry and ethnopoetics, Selected Poems: 1950-2000 documents Nathaniel Tarn as a major American poet and a welcome addition to any personal or academic poetry collection. The Curtains: The leaves are coming down/the walls of my life/are not more solid//I hear the leaves coming down/at night they make the noise of footsteps/or the kisses of children/they fall like a curtain/between the leaves/bits of a sky we try to remember//"There was in that man/had he been left unshaken by his stars/a happy disposition"//On the other side of the curtain/the fathomless country lies about us/the farms/sitting like loaves among the fields/the animals/at home in their own breaths/needing no byres/and birds never a roost//We have seen it/we know it by heart/men of no season//I shall build on nothing/on nothing build my house/out of the iron nail remorselessly/hammered into the ground of this dead year//the nail so bald so cold/out of humiliation and the grinding feet/on nothing build my house/and when the leaves are fallen/and hammering is done/the curtains of the house will have been hung//Through which we glimpse/the place we shall inhabit/full void that memory

I was extremely disappointed in this book. The only memorable parts were those written by Prechtel. The rest is a confusing mismash of undeveloped personalities and poorly described events. I'm amazed that Tarn has such a reputation!

...I was surprised to see a sweeping endorsement by Octavio Pazon the back cover... Imagine my disappointment upon finding the simpleblack and white maps to be the most illustrative content in this work in progress. This reader had the sense of being dumped for the first time [as if from a Stargate] into some abstract world that makes little sense. There is no introduction. While the authors want to be informative, the jumbled chaos of random events is difficult to follow. The accounts of various adventures comprise an odd catalog of short tales that are entertaining. They are revealing of simple daily life in a small village facing the demons of technology and modernization....it has some academic pretensions and at other times seems a personal essay or an abstract poetic impression. The writing seems like a translation from an older text in a different language. Some of the political commentaries are redundant . The subtitle of this book is "Shamans and Priests on Lake Atitlan" - it might better be called "Reflections on the disintegration of traditional Atitican culture and folkways."... Students of Guatemalan history, and Mayan ethnographics scholars may find the descriptions of rituals and the dictionary of Tzutujil Maya and Spanish terms a welcome addition. I would like to see an improved second edition, but don't anticipate a market for it.

In a word, "Scandals in the House of Birds: Shamans and Priests on Lake Atitlan" is among the most remarkable ethnographies that I have read. Written by one of anthropology's and poetry's leading innovators, Nathaniel Tarn, the book is at the cutting edge in ethnographic representation. It reflects the author's nearly five decades of scholarly dedication to the Tz'utujil Mayan town of Santiago Atitlan, and demonstrates the craftsmanship of a master poet and writer.

The book is largely an exploration of the enchanted entanglements surrounding a local deity, the notorious god Maximon. In so doing, it spans from a time when deities walked a mythological landscape, to the 1990s, when the all too real grim reapers of the Guatemalan army prowl about. Along the journey, the reader is introduced to contemporary Mayan shamans, and also to Martin Prechtel, a fascinating Euroamerican who held a high religious position in the town during one of the author's stays. (It merits note that the book offers a far more grounded version of Prechtel's tenure in Atitlan than that found in Prechtel's own published account.) Although "Scandals in the House of Birds" is written entirely by Nathaniel Tarn, he graciously cites Prechtel as a contributor of substantial information and experience.

Underlying much of the book is a 1950s "sacred crime" when Maximon's wooden head was stolen by Catholic priests, found its way to a major European museum, and eventually was returned to the town, largely through the joint efforts of Tarn and Prechtel. With that drama providing a backdrop, Tarn intersperses myths about Maximon and other regional Mayan deities, discusses the roles played by Prechtel and himself in the town, all the while tying in considerable cultural data. Of particular note is the book's innovative multivocality. Most of the book's chapters are devoted to particular historical or mythological incidents, for instance the birth of Maximon. Tarn breaks the narration into its significant episodes and then presents side by side versions of the episode narrated by such individuals as Weep Wizard, Loincloth, Prechtel, or the author himself.

As with any innovative, dare I say experimental, ethnography, "Scandals in the House of Birds" demands the reader's attention. Despite its multi-layered complexity the reader never feels overwhelmed, but instead is carried along by the book's surprises and innovations. The book should have wide appeal to students and scholars of Latin America, to anthropologists and to writers, as well as to those interested native peoples and their cultures.

Robert S. Carlsen