Few writers of any age have described the pleasures and torments of erotic love with such unsentimental directness and sensual precision as Pablo Neruda. In this poetry, too, he is at his most accessible, the language of his odes and lyrics refined to the point at which it achieves what one critic has called the naturalness of song. This short selection draws on work from throughout his writing career, from the famous early collection, Twenty Love Songs and a Song of Despair of 1924 to key works of his maturity like Elemental Odes from 1954 and the autobiographical Memorial de Isla Negra. These ten poems formed the subtext for the well-known film Il Postino which was based on an apocryphal episode in the life of the Chilean poet and Nobel Laureate. They reveal why many believe that Neruda was the finest love poet of the century.

Author Biography

Born Neftal-Ricardo Reyes Basoalto in southern Chile in 1904, Pablo Neruda led a life charged with poetic and political activity. His first book, Crepusculario ('Twilight') was published in 1923. The following year, he published Veinte poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada ('Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair'), which turned him into a celebrity. In 1927 he began his long career as a diplomat, serving as Chilean consul in numerous places including Burma, Buenos Aires, Madrid, Mexico and France. He was elected to the Chilean Senate in 1943 but later expelled for being a Communist. In 1952 the government withdrew the order to arrest leftist writers and political figures, and Neruda returned to Chile. For the next twenty-one years, he continued a career that integrated private and public concerns and became known as the people's poet. During this time, Neruda received numerous prestigious awards, including the International Peace Prize in 1950, the Lenin Peace Prize and the Stalin Peace Prize in 1953, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. He died of leukaemia in Santiago, Chile in 1973.