This edition brings together twenty odes in which the poet pays homage to food and other elemental pleasures linked to art and the act of eating. In these poetic compositions, "flour, bread, and wine symbolize the nourishment that is the elemental matter of man. Poetry, for him, should also be nourishment, as simple and essential as bread," writes Darío Oses, editor of the author's memoirs and former director of the Pablo Neruda Foundation Library, in the prologue. Just as in the Bestiary (LZR, 2019), illustrated by Luis Scafati, Odes to Food and Other Elemental Pleasures also pays homage to America and its ever-exuberant fruits. United under the culinary reference, these odes are not only a joyful enumeration of some of the prosperous elements that nature offers us, but also a profound reflection on the conquest and colonization of America. As Neruda writes in his "Ode to the Potato": "But when the poor defeated captains returned to the stones of Castile, they raised in their bloody hands not a golden cup, but the potato of marine Chiloé." Javier Zabala's illustrations, through the variety of color and the expressive power of his drawings, explore the nuances of the elements described by Neruda. His avant-garde, pictorial language is unique and widely recognizable.