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Selected Poems

by Pablo Neruda Edited by Ben Belitt Translated from Spanish by Ben Belitt Introduction by Luis Monguio

“One of the greatest poets of the Spanish world . . . also one of the major poets of the twentieth century. . . . A robust, Whitmanesque surrealism surges forth like a jungle river. . . . Ben Belitt’s translations are inspired.” —The New York Times Book Review

Paperback

Imprint Grove Paperback
Page Count 320
Publication Date April 01, 1971
ISBN-13 978-0-8021-5102-5
Dimensions 5.38" x 8.25"
US List Price $16.00

Pablo Neruda, the nom de plume of Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, was born in Chile, in 1904. His first collection of poems, Crepusculario, was published in 1923 when he was nineteen years of age, but it was his second, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924), that would ultimately earn him literary celebrity. Other notable works include: Spain in My Heart (1933), inspired by Neruda’s experiences during the Spanish Civil War and by the death of his friend and fellow poet, Federico García Lorca; Residence on Earth (1933), a collection of obscure and surreal poems; and Canto General (1950), an expansive work, composed in exile about the socio-political history of Latin America from a Marxist ethos. Neruda was an active politician, as well a writer, and held administrative positions in Spain, Burma (Myanmar), Indonesia, and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). He was also forced into exile 1949 because of his politics, but returned to Chile in 1952. He was close to Salvador Allende and from 1970 to 1972 Neruda served as the Chilean ambassador to France. In 1971, Neruda was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for a poetry that with the action of an elemental force brings alive a continent’s destiny and dreams”. The Colombian author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, once called Pablo Neruda, “the greatest poet of the twentieth century in any language.” He died in 1973.
Read More About Pablo Neruda
Related Websites
- Pablo Neruda's Nobel Prize Citation

About the Book

The winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize for Literature, Pablo Neruda is regarded as the greatest Latin American poet of the twentieth century. This bilingual edition makes available a major selection of his poems, both in the original Spanish and impressively rendered into English by “his most enduring translator, the poet Ben Belitt” (Robert Creeley).

Praise

“We are not likely to get, in English, a more detailed, subtle, and sympathetic analysis of the complicated and enigmatic poet Pablo Neruda.” —The New Yorker

“The book is impressive for the number of pieces chosen, the good taste of the selections, and above all, the mastery with which Ben Belitt has turned into English some of the finest and most difficult works of the celebrated Chilean poet.” —Hispania