Few writers are as integrally bound to place as Pablo Neruda was to the landscape of Isla Negra on the Chilean coast. From his arrival there in the late 1930s to his death in 1973, Isla Negra became a text that unraveled in a series of images fundamental to an understanding of his work. Renowned documentary photographer Rogovin's photographs were taken in Isla Negra at the suggestion of Neruda himself. The poems and photographs reveal the landscape of Isla Negra as well as the home into which Neruda put so much of himself. This volume is issued to celebrate the centennial of the Nobel Prize winning poet's birth.
The sound of ships' bells, sea waves, and migratory birds fuel Neruda's longing to retreat from life's noisy busyness. Stripped to essentials, these poems are some of the last Neruda ever wrote, as he pulled "one dream out of another." Includes the final lovesong to his wife, written in the past tense: "It was beautiful to live / When you lived!" Bilingual with introduction.
"Deeply personal, expansive, and universal... majestic and understated beauty."-Publishers Weekly
