"I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and, like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests"
About this Quote
The intent is quietly strategic. By casting his poetry as “born” in the landscape, Neruda collapses biography into geography. The “town” becomes a kind of womb, and nature supplies the vocal cords. That move matters for a writer who spent his career turning intimacy into public language, love lyrics into national myth. He’s telling readers: my metaphors aren’t abstract; they were trained by real rain, real labor, real forests. The timber image, especially, carries class and industry in its grain. Wood implies work, extraction, the body’s relationship to the land - not just postcard beauty.
Context sharpens the subtext. Neruda’s Chile is a country where geography dominates identity: long, vertical, hemmed by mountains and sea. In a Latin American literary tradition often pressured by European models, he’s also pushing back against cultural dependence. Nature here is not innocence; it’s provenance. The sentence performs what it claims: lush, sensuous accumulation that makes environment into music, and makes the poet into its instrument.
Quote Details
| Topic | Poetry |
|---|---|
| Source | Verified source: Memoirs (Pablo Neruda, 1974)
Evidence: I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests. (Page 188). The quote appears in Pablo Neruda's autobiographical Memoirs, the English translation of Confieso que he vivido. In the PDF source, it is on page 188, in the section describing his passage through Temuco while fleeing Chile. The Spanish memoir Confieso que he vivido was first published posthumously in 1974 by Seix Barral, and this is very likely the original publication/source of the passage; the exact English wording given here is from the translated edition Memoirs. So the primary source is Neruda's own memoir, not a later quotation anthology. ([sphinxlibrary.com](https://sphinxlibrary.com/Calibre/Pablo%20Neruda/Memoirs%20%287314%29/Memoirs%20-%20Pablo%20Neruda.pdf)) Other candidates (1) Daily Bread for Your Mind and Soul (Fayek S. Hourani, 2012) compilation98.0% ... I grew up in this town , my poetry was born between the hill and the river , it took its voice from the rain , an... |
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Neruda, Pablo. (2026, March 14). I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and, like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-grew-up-in-this-town-my-poetry-was-born-between-128565/
Chicago Style
Neruda, Pablo. "I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and, like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests." FixQuotes. March 14, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-grew-up-in-this-town-my-poetry-was-born-between-128565/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and, like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests." FixQuotes, 14 Mar. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-grew-up-in-this-town-my-poetry-was-born-between-128565/. Accessed 14 Mar. 2026.
