Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair: Dual-Language Edition (Penguin Classics) (Spanish Edition)
Neftali Ricardo Reyes, whose pseudonym was to be Pablo Neruda, was born in Parral, Chile, in 1904.  He grew up in the pioneer town of Temuco, briefly encountering Gabriela Mistral, who taught there for a time.  In 1920 he went to Santiago to study, and the following year published his first collection of poetry,La Cancion de la Fiesta.  A second collection,Crepusculario, brought him critical recognition; and in 1924 the hugely successfulVeinte Poemas de Amor y una Cancion Desesperadaappeared.  From 1927 to 1943, Neruda lived abroad, serving as a diplomat in Rangoon, Colombo, Batavia, Singapore, Buenos Aires, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, and Mexico City.  This is the period that saw the publication of the first two volumes of his celebratedResidencia en la Tierra.  He joined the Communist Party of Chile after World War II, was prosecuted as a subversive, and began an exile that took him to Russia, Eastern Europe, and China.  Already the most renowned Latin American poet of his time, he returned to Chile in 1952.  He died there in 1973, having just seen the fourth edition of hisObras Completasthrough the press.  In receiving the Nobel Prize in 1971, he had said that the poet must achieve a balance "between solitude and solidarity, between feeling and action, between the intimacy of one's self, the intimacy of mankind, and the relevation of nature."W.S. Merwinhas published many highly regarded books of poems, for which he has received a number of distinguished awards—the Pulitzer Prize, Bollingen Award, Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets and the Governor's Award for Literature of the state of Hawaii among them.  He has translated widely from many languages, and his versions of classics such asThe Poem of the CidandThe Song of Rolandare standards.Cristina García is the author ofDreaming in Cuban, which was nominated for a National Book Award.