Pablo Neruda was a Chilean poet, diplomat, and Nobel laureate whose love poems helped define twentieth-century romantic poetry, in Spanish and far beyond it. This is a small selection of his poems, given voice.
Pablo Neruda was born Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto in 1904 in Parral, Chile. He published his first book of poems as a teenager and, by twenty, had written Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair) — one of the best-selling poetry collections ever published in Spanish.
Alongside his writing, Neruda served as a Chilean diplomat and senator, and spent periods of his life in exile for his political convictions. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971. He died in Santiago in 1973, days after the military coup that overthrew the government he had supported.
His love poetry — direct, physical, and unguarded — remains among the most widely read in the world, in Spanish and in translation.