To Fidel Castro by Pablo Neruda

[YesNo]

São Paulo is also being flooded by global warming. Every year the heat gets up one grade.
The cortadito is probably our "curto", the short coffee.

I think there is some high land near São Paulo that the inhabitants on the coast could move to. In Florida, it is all pretty flat. What's worse, the ground is porous limestone and so one can't even put up a dike to hold back the water: it would just come up from the ground.

What do you think of Neruda? I know a lot of people like his work. Personally, the only thing that I find interesting is the "Veinte Poemas de Amor" (http://www.archivochile.com/Homenaje...neruda0007.pdf), but even in those poems I wonder what is actually going on.

[Pompey Bum]

Darn that page turn! Looking forward to your response, Danik.

So what was the answer to my question about free speech? Or let me put it another way. President-Elect Trump greeted the news of Castro's death with the following: “Fidel Castro’s legacy is one of firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights." In your opinion, what would happen to Cubans who said the same? What would happen if they danced in the streets?!

How about human rights violations? I've heard stories (just this morning) about dissidents being officially tortured and raped in Cuban prisons. In your opinion, are such stories true?

[Clopin]

Good, he's dead. Intellectuals always like to **** about and cozy up to tyrants with sex appeal so I'm not too surprised by the poem.

You should see what our pitiful spineless leader had to say about the "passing of a great man" PB.

[Pompey Bum]

You should see what our pitiful spineless leader had to say about the "passing of a great man" PB.

He needn't worry. Raul Castro has been in charge for a decade. Cuba retains every horror it enjoyed under the great man.

[prendrelemick]

How about human rights violations? I've heard stories (just this morning) about dissidents being officially tortured and raped in Cuban prisons. In your opinion, are such stories true?

Was that in Guantanamo bay ?

[Danik 2016]

I think there is some high land near São Paulo that the inhabitants on the coast could move to. In Florida, it is all pretty flat. What's worse, the ground is porous limestone and so one can't even put up a dike to hold back the water: it would just come up from the ground.

What do you think of Neruda? I know a lot of people like his work. Personally, the only thing that I find interesting is the "Veinte Poemas de Amor" (http://www.archivochile.com/Homenaje...neruda0007.pdf), but even in those poems I wonder what is actually going on.

The interior is usually still hotter than the capital. Rio is hotter than São Paulo but they have the sea brise there.To give you an idea last year we had what we called "winter 40 º" with temperatures soaring up to an uncommon level. This year winter and spring were more normal, they tell us it is on account of the stream "La ninã". Presently temperatures maxims are about 30º-32º .

I like Pablo Neruda, but not specifically his love poems. His poems are loaded with a typically hispanian imagery, very sensuous and at the first look often incongruous. I think English poetry is more sober, the methaphors are more easy to understand. But he has his humorous side too, which I prefer. I found a selection of poems translated to English. Have a look at his "Ode for The Tomato":

http://poetsofmodernity.xyz/POMBR/Sp...or_Toc12957994

[Pompey Bum]

Was that in Guantanamo bay ?

Ad hominem tu quoque fallacy, Prend (not that Gitmo isn't an abomination).

The interior is usually still hotter than the capital. Rio is hotter than São Paulo but they have the sea brise there.To give you an idea last year we had what we called "winter 40 º" with temperatures soaring up to an uncommon level. This year winter and spring were more normal, they tell us it is on account of the stream "La ninã". Presently temperatures maxims are about 30º-32º .

I like Pablo Neruda, but not specifically his love poems. His poems are loaded with a typically hispanian imagery, very sensuous and at the first look often incongruous. I think English poetry is more sober, the methaphors are more easy to understand. But he has his humorous side too, which I prefer. I found a selection of poems translated to English. Have a look at his "Ode for The Tomato":

http://poetsofmodernity.xyz/POMBR/Sp...or_Toc12957994

Another question, Danik: in your opinion is turning one's head from the reality of human evil one of the things that enables it?

[YesNo]

The interior is usually still hotter than the capital. Rio is hotter than São Paulo but they have the sea brise there.To give you an idea last year we had what we called "winter 40 º" with temperatures soaring up to an uncommon level. This year winter and spring were more normal, they tell us it is on account of the stream "La ninã". Presently temperatures maxims are about 30º-32º .

I like Pablo Neruda, but not specifically his love poems. His poems are loaded with a typically hispanian imagery, very sensuous and at the first look often incongruous. I think English poetry is more sober, the methaphors are more easy to understand. But he has his humorous side too, which I prefer. I found a selection of poems translated to English. Have a look at his "Ode for The Tomato":

http://poetsofmodernity.xyz/POMBR/Sp...or_Toc12957994

It seems to be unusually warm in Chicago for this time of year. Although we are at higher sea level, flooding could occur with a large quantity of rainfall that can't be drained fast enough.

Neruda's tomato poem was nice. These two lines stand out for me: "Sadly we have to/murder it" That is not what I think I'm doing when I slice a tomato to make a salad.

[Pompey Bum]

Now where could Danik have gone?

[Danik 2016]

It seems to be unusually warm in Chicago for this time of year. Although we are at higher sea level, flooding could occur with a large quantity of rainfall that can't be drained fast enough.

Neruda's tomato poem was nice. These two lines stand out for me: "Sadly we have to/murder it" That is not what I think I'm doing when I slice a tomato to make a salad.

I hope you don´t get any floods, here they are disastrous, but they usually occur in summer.
The tomatoes we slice are already dead, I think. But certain poems change our manner of looking at things.

[Pompey Bum]

Oh, there you are! Hey, I thought of another one: if Donald Trump had put his political enemies in front of firing squads, would you be still talking about the weather? ;-)

[prendrelemick]

I'd probably be dead.

[prendrelemick]

Both Neruda and me hoped it would turn out better than it did.

Castro was a very bad man. Perhaps those 700+ CIA plots against his life made him a little edgy in the mornings.

Asinus asellum culpat .

[Pompey Bum]

Perhaps those 700+ CIA plots against his life made him a little edgy in the mornings.

I'm sure they did. Lyndon Johnson went to his grave believing that Castro had killed Kennedy because Kennedy kept trying to kill him. But that's got nothing to do with the people Castro tortured and murdered.

Asinus asellum culpat.

I disagree. Castro enjoyed enough useful idiots in his lifetime. As I said to Danik on another thread, silence breeds pestilence. He was a very bad man, as you say. Good men and women need to keep saying it.

[prendrelemick]

Yet Kennedy like Neruda supported the revolution at first. That's politics !

"I believe that there is no country in the world including any and all the countries under colonial domination, where economic colonization, humiliation and exploitation were worse than in Cuba, in part owing to my country's policies during the Batista regime. I approved the proclamation which Fidel Castro made in the Sierra Maestra, when he justifiably called for justice and especially yearned to rid Cuba of corruption. I will even go further: to some extent it is as though Batista was the incarnation of a number of sins on the part of the United States. Now we shall have to pay for those sins. In the matter of the Batista regime, I am in agreement with the first Cuban revolutionaries. That is perfectly clear."
— U.S. President John F. Kennedy