Love Sonnet 17 Analysis

Symbols, Imagery, Wordplay

Form and Meter

It is nearly impossible to retain the meter of the original language when translating poetry. On occasion translators attempt to do so, but the gap is nearly unbridgeable. Because of that, we won't...

Speaker

It's pretty obvious that our speaker is in love. But since he spends all his time talking about this love (and in particular, the woman he loves), we don't hear much about the man himself. Still, t...

Setting

"Love Sonnet 17" is an incredibly intimate poem, so we imagine an incredibly intimate setting. Perhaps the speaker is actually intertwined with his lover in the way he describes at the end of his p...

Sound Check

We can't really base the sound of this poem off the English translation (sound is very particular to each language). So we suggest you listen to the poem in its original language to get a sense of...

What's Up With the Title?

Neruda’s poem is often referred to simply as "Love Sonnet 17," which means that it’s the seventeenth sonnet in a larger group (in this case, 100). Sometimes, however, it is referred to by its f...

Calling Card

Neruda is one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century, and his love poetry has earned him a pretty good reputation. While he's always incredibly passionate, a lot of what he says, both in "L...

Tough-o-Meter

Love poetry is nothing new, sure, but Neruda does love poetry in his own, unique way that can make him seem more difficult than he really is. The poem’s language itself is pretty straightforward,...

Trivia

Pablo Neruda always wrote his poems in green ink; this is one of his many idiosyncrasies (characteristics unique to him). (Source.)The famous Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges once referred to Ner...

Steaminess Rating

There’s nothing overtly sexual about "Love Sonnet 17," especially when you compare it to, say, "I want to eat your skin like a whole almond" (from Neruda's "Love Sonnet 11"). But this poem is def...