I've never picked up poetry collections on my own. I like poetic writing styles but not poems necessarily as they are rather difficult and the language is sometimes too roundabout to handle. While some of Neruda's poems in this collection are lightly difficult to decode and understand. On the whole, I still enjoyed the feeling it gave. The idea of a man who has lived life and now sits to discuss all his great and small tales. The strangers he met, the journeys he took, the nature, the days and the current state of his mind, which knows of its evident demise. It's the story of a man rushing to catch up with all his works, to write down all his stories before he forgets them, before he forgets to appreciate them. This collection was still beautiful. It was authentically South American, the ideas the writing style and the world it described.