Have you even driven behind a car with a bumper sticker that said "Question Reality"? Well, if you have, chances are that Pablo Neruda was driving in front of you. What's that? He's been dead since 1973? Well… at least Neruda would have been a fan of the person driving that car. That's because the third poem his The Book of Questions is all about looking past surface appearances to probe the mysterious depths of this thing that we take for granted every day: reality. What is it? How do we know it's really real—like, really? Our speaker wants to know and—come to think of it—we'd like to be clued in too, if you don't mind.
Questions About Versions of Reality
- What alternatives to conventional reality are put forward in this poem?
- Do you think imagination has the power to transform reality? How would the speaker answer that question?
- Why do you think the speaker asks us questions to investigate reality? Why not just make direct observations himself?
Chew on This
The only true reality in this poem is the reality of the speaker's imagination.
The speaker's questions are about a useless as handlebars on a unicycle. We can never truly know what's real.