Tonight I Can Write | Style

Tonight I Can Write Style

Readers responded positively to Neruda's innovative, simple, direct language and sparse imagery in "Tonight I Can Write." In her book on Neruda, Agosin writes that the poem, along with others in the collection, "marks a clear transition from the era of Spanish-American modernism to that of surrealism, with its often disconnected images and metaphors, which will dominate Neruda's next phase." The poem does not contain a regular meter. Neruda suppresses rhyme but attains rhythm through a mixture of consonance and assonance. Often one line will appear by itself, calling attention to content over form. Duran and Safir in their book, Earth Tones: The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, determine "Tonight I Can Write" to be a "constructive" poem, in that it is "organized around experiences in which real human beings, Neruda himself and the women he loved, provide a stabilizing platform upon which [the poem] is built."

Symbolism

Neruda uses nature...
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