Neruda wrote four volumes of odes from 1954 to 1959. Nuevas odas elementales, in which "Ode to My Socks" appears, was the second volume in the series and was released in 1956. Two more volumes followed in 1957 and 1959. Neruda apparently began writing the poems for a weekly column in a newspaper in Venezuela, which accounts for their simple, public style. Although his four books of odes were published separately, Neruda said that he thought of all his odes as making up a single work, as they tell "a history of the time, of diverse things, trades, people, fruits, and flowers, of life and my vision. . ." When the first collection, Odas elementales, appeared in 1954, it met with resounding success from all quarters in Chile, from ordinary readers to literary figures to academic critics. Even readers who were unsympathetic to Neruda's politics accorded them unequivocal praise. The conservative writer Herná...