Referred to as ?the greatest
poet of the twentieth century in any language?, the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda
has been published in the original Spanish and in translation throughout the
world. So it is remarkable that some of this Nobel Prize-winner?s verse has
never been published in English and this book goes a long way to filling this
extraordinary gap. Edited and translated by Neruda?s acclaimed biographer, Adam
Feinstein, these brand-new versions begin in 1919, when the fifteen-year-old
boy, still called Neftal¡ Reyes, was feeling his literary way in Temuco, in southern Chile. The book follows him to the
capital, Santiago,
and to his first published collection, Crepusculario,
in 1923, then on through many of his further collections up to his final
works in the early 1970s. Neruda?s poetry is a fusion of beautiful love poetry
and politically engaged verse, lyrical and apocalyptic by turns, and in few
poets can life and work be so intimately interwoven: Adam Feinstein provides an
illuminating introduction which puts these poems in the context of a man of
memorable actions as well as words.