Nobel Laureate Charged with sensuality and passion, Pablo Neruda's love poems caused a scandal when published anonymously in 1952. In later editions, these verses became the most celebrated of the Noble Prize winner's oeuvre, captivating readers with earthbound images that reveal in gentle lingering lines an erotic re-imagining of the world through the prism of a lover's body: today our bodies became vast, they grew to the edge of the world / and rolled melting / into a single drop / of waxor meteor. . . ." Written on the paradisal island of Capri, where Neruda "took refuge" in the arms of his lover Matilde Urrutia, LOVE POEMS embraces the seascapes around them, saturating the images of endless shores and waves with a new, yearning eroticism. This wonderful book collects Neruda's most passionate verses. It is difficult to find an analogue for the sustained passion and gentleness communicated in this absolutely stunning apotheosis of the poetry of sexual love. One of the greatest major poets of the twentieth century. It is hard not to be swept away by the urgency of his language, and that's especially so when he seems swept away. The greatest poet of the twentieth century - in any language. - Gabriel Garcia Marquez