The Extraordinary in the Ordinary

As with the majority of the odes he wrote from 1954 to 1959, in "Ode to My Socks" Neruda exalts one of the basic things of daily existence. The poet describes the object of his celebration in such a way as to make it achieve an otherworldly status. It becomes clear that what normally might be taken for granted as being ordinary is actually quite extraordinary. The mundane objects described here, two socks, the poet in fact finds quite remarkable— soft as rabbits, like jewel cases, made of a nonmaterial substance (dusk) as well as wholly material sheep's wool. The socks transform the poet's feet, so that they become sharks, blackbirds, cannons. They are celestial, beautiful, luminous woven fire. The various similes used to describe the socks reinforce the idea of the enormous possibilities in the things of the world, and of grandeur and power (the...