La mañana, las tardes y esta noche/ Morning, Afternoons, and Tonight is a unique artist book, which includes four poems written by Pablo Neruda with seven original drawings by Manuel Neri. The poems Mañana XXVII / Morning XXVII and Mediodía XXXIII /Afternoon XXXIII were included in Neruda’s book of poems entitled Cien sonetos de amor (100 Love Sonnets), first published in Buenos Aires in 1960, and published in English in 1986 by the University of Texas Press, translated by Stephen Tapscott. The poems VII Inclinado en las tardes /VII Leaning Into the Afternoons and XX Puedo escribir los versos / XX Tonight I Can Write were first published in Neruda’s book 20 poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair), first published in Santiago de Chile in 1924, and translated from Spanish into English in 1969 by W. S. Merwin. The drawings by Manuel Neri, in water-based pigments, graphite and oil pastel, are figure studies from the Lucia Series done in 1983, and were selected by Manuel Neri to accompany the poems for this book. The Introduction was written in English by Mary Julia Klimenko and translated into Spanish by Jaime Moreno Villarreal. The calligraphy of the text was designed and executed by Thomas Ingmire on Somerset Satin Soft White in the Fall of 2004.
The binding structure for the book was developed by Daniel E. Kelm. The binding incorporates a method of sewing that traps the spine fold of each signature between double raised cords and an interior stainless steel wire. The goatskin leather binding, with unique leather onlay, hand-tooling and stamping in gold and palladium leaf was designed and produced by Daniel E. Kelm, Kylin Lee, and the mechanics at the Wide Awake Garage in Easthampton, Massachusetts. The book is enclosed in a cloth-covered clamshell box with leather label, also produced at the Wide Awake Garage.
