
First published in 1924, Veinte Poemas de Amor y una Canción Desesperada remains among Neruda's most popular work. Daringly metaphorical, these poems are based upon his own private associations. Their sensuous use of nature symbolism to celebrate love and to express grief has not been surpassed in the literature of our century. This edition offers the original Spanish text with masterly translations by W. S. Merwin on facing pages.
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1904–1973
Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (12 July 1904 – 23 September 1973), better known by his pen name and, later, legal name Pablo Neruda (/nəˈruːdə/; Spanish: [ˈpaβlo neˈɾuða]), was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. Neruda became known as a poet when he was 13 years old, and wrote in a variety of styles, including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and passionate love poems such as the ones in his collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924). [source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Neruda)
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