Despite the title, these aren’t erotic poems, but passionate meditations on objects as seemingly inconsequential as lemons, salt, and socks. Neruda’s poetry revolves around vivid sensory details and memories from the forests of southern Chile where he is from. This book will remind you of the inherent beauty of the natural world and to celebrate even the smallest moments in life, for example, the wavelike ripple in a piece of fabric or the smell of rosemary wafted by a songbird’s wings. While I deeply enjoyed this title, I think the organization was unbalanced, with a string of odes in the middle that could have benefited from being broken up. Neruda’s work as seen through Mitchell’s eyes gets to the heart of what I love so much about poetry: how emotions are condensed through language, creating a timeless and enduring connection to the speaker’s inner world.