Comparative Essay on Pablo Neruda’s "Your Mouth, Your Voice, Your Hair and

Octavio Paz’s "Touch".

Upon looking at the title of both poems, Pablo Neruda’s "I Crave Your Mouth,
Your Voice, Your Hair" and Octavio Paz’s "Truth", the first mentioned title can be
portrayed and interpreted basically only in one way. It is not misleading in the facts
that it gives a good understanding of what the poem will be about. Unlike the latter,
this full of emotion poem of Neruda clearly manifests the author’s feelings towards
his lover and his great desire and the feeling of need for this woman. "Touch" on the
other hand, creates symbols on the reader’s mind as the word touch may carry with it
its connotative and denotative meanings.

The tone of Neruda’s poem is set by feelings of anguish, misery, agony, and grief.
While the tone of the other mentioned poem is somewhat associated to sexiness. The
choice of words or diction of Paz sounds and appeals sensual as it mentions nudity
and uncovering of bodies. Both poem’s true meaning are deep because of all the
metaphors and rhetorical devices used throughout the poem.

It can be assumed that the woman Neruda describes in his poem is someone he
had completely fallen in love with. On the contrary, Paz’s work indefinitely describe
how his touch had transformed into a magic that uncovered a woman’s body and
reveal not a single entity but a multiple-layered existence. In the first stanza of Neruda,
he uses repetition and caps on lines 1and 2 in order to emphasize the pain he would go
through if she were to ever leave him even for the smallest amount of time. He then
uses simile to compare himself waiting for her to an empty train station. In the simile,
he personifies the trains by giving them human-like qualities such as sleeping. The
meaning of the simile is direct in the fact that the comparison is clear and vivid. Paz
did repetitions too as he stressed out emphasis to "My Hands" on the first and second
to the last line putting a gentle cue that his hands created the magic touch that unveils
the woman’s physical being. He also had irony in the third line when he said he
clothe her in further nudity. Throughout the second stanza, Neruda uses imagery to
give a further feel for his agony if she leaves him.

After reading Neruda’s poem, one can conclude that he was a very loving person
but was also very impatient and desperate. He might as well was going through some
struggles and was doing all his power to try and keep her by his side.

Neruda here was quite sure of his woman or lover in the poem. Paz on the
contrary, has a woman subject but unidentified relationship towards him. Neruda is
certain on the woman he speaks of in the poem, while Paz considered himself the light,
an exquisite light that invented another body for her. Virginity walked into my nerves
as he declared his act of clothing with nudity and uncovering the bodies and that
invented a new body or a new life comes into being.