The Poetry of Pablo Neruda

About this book

The most comprehensive English-language collection of work ever by the greatest poet of the twentieth centuryin any language (Gabriel Garca Mrquez) In his work a continent awakens to consciousness wrote the Swedish Academy in awarding the Nobel Prize to Pablo Neruda author of more than thirty-five books of poetry and one of Latin Americas most revered writers and political figuresa loyal member of the Communist party a lifelong diplomat and onetime senator a man lionized during his lifetime as the peoples poet. Born Neftali Basoalto Neruda adopted his pen name in fear of his familys disapproval and yet by the age of twenty-five he was already famous for the book Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair which remains his most beloved. During the next fifty years a seemingly boundless metaphorical language linked his romantic fantasies and the fierce moral and political compassexemplified in books such as Canto Generalthat made him an adamant champion of the dignity of ordinary men and women. Edited and with an introduction by Ilan Stavans this is the most comprehensive single-volume collection of this prolific poets work in English. Here the finest translations of nearly six hundred poems by Neruda are collected and join specially commissioned new translations that attest to Nerudas still-resounding presence in American letters.