"How could you not love this book? Put it by the bedside. Or by the porcelain convenience. Anywhere you find yourself alone with a minute. Flip pages to a random ode, and have a ball . These are direct, open, rapid, often joyful poems addressed to things of this world--onion, building, butterfly, eye, horse, washerwoman, envy, old poet, typography (yes!), Paul Robeson . It's a grateful, grief-stricken, revolving-in-wonder song of life on Earth, a reminder, in short, skinny bursts, of the thrill of what's in front of us . By far most of the odes strike me as still vigorous. And Stavans' notes explain much that has gone forgotten .

If you read All the Odes , you will live more alive to the living world." -- John Timpane, Philly.com on Pablo Neruda "There is no poetic work in the Spanish language as exuberant and multifarious as that of Neruda, a poetry that has touched so many different worlds and irrigated such diverse vocations and talents. The only comparable case I know in other languages is that of Victor Hugo . Undoubtedly, Neruda's work will endure and continue to bewitch future generations of readers the way it has bewitched ours." -- Mario Vargas Llosa on Pablo Neruda.