Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda

Culled from recently discovered notebooks and sheets of paper stored in cases on Neruda's estate, these 21 poems were written from the 1950s to shortly before the death of the perennially popular 1971 Chilean Nobel laureate. Poems such as No. 1 ("I touch your feet in the shade"), the exquisite No. 4 ("What guides autumn's leaf into your golden hand"), and No. 5 ("Crossing the sky I near/ the red ray of your hair") fit in with his early love poetry. A sizable number proceed from his ode period, with its paeans to simple, ordinary objects. The only one bearing a title, "To the Andes," recalls the patriotic homage to the Americas found in Canto general. Deftly translated by Pulitzer Prize finalist poet Gander (Core Samples from the World) and accompanied by copious notes and illustrations from the manuscripts, this selection is sequentially (vs. face-to-face) bilingual.