Why I Love Pablo Neruda

For years, I have admired the poetry of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. His sensuous passion for life resonates deeply with me. His poetry, like much of my own, explores love, death, and life’s simple pleasures.

Neruda began writing poetry sometime between the ages of 10 and 13, about the same time I began jotting poems in my journal. In addition to odes and love poetry, he wrote surrealistic poems, political poems, and prose autobiography. While Neruda’s poems were all written in Spanish and translated into English, even in translation it’s easy to sense their tenderness, sensuality, and passion. While…