photo © luis poirot

Pablo Neruda was raised on a frontier town just above Patagonia at the beginning of the 20th Century. From that green earth of snow-capped volcanoes, Neruda grew to be a public poet, a statesman, an activist, and Nobel Laureate. He attained mythic stature in his lifetime. Neruda was an incurable romantic yet an incorrigible womanizer. He was a militant communist but despite his constant evocation of pacifism to achieve change, supported Stalin even after he knew of the crimes. His contradictions, though, found a vanguard poetic expression in an aching lyricism and potent political verse. He invented a new, distinctly Americano poetic voice rooted in Latin America’s native cultures and untamed geography. Neruda wrestled poetry down from the rarified atmosphere of the salon and gave it to the people, a communal voice of the old oral tradition, fired by raw passion and the struggle for justice.

“Poetry is like bread,” he wrote. “It should be shared by all, by scholars and peasants, by all our vast, incredible, extraordinary family of humanity." Read more about Pablo...