Apollinaire's calligramme (1918)

The Chinese poem Quatrain on Heavenly Mountain by Emperor Gaozong of Song; fan mounted as album leaf on silk, four columns in cursive script

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary greatly in different cultures and time periods.^[1] Throughout each civilization and language, poets have used various styles that have changed through the course of literary history, resulting in a history of poets as diverse as the literature they have produced.

The English word "poet" is derived from the French poète, itself descended from the Latin first-declension masculine noun poeta, meaning "poet". The word "poetry" derives from the Latin feminine noun poetria, meaning not "poetry" but "poetess".

French poet Arthur Rimbaud summarized the "poet" by writing,

A poet makes himself a visionary through a long, boundless, and systematized disorganization of all the senses. All forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he exhausts within himself all poisons, and preserves their quintessences. Unspeakable torment, where he will need the greatest faith, a superhuman strength, where he becomes all men: the great invalid, the great criminal, the great accursed—and the Supreme Scientist! For he attains the unknown! Because he has cultivated his soul, already rich, more than anyone! He attains the unknown, and, if demented, he finally loses the understanding of his visions, he will at least have seen them! So what if he is destroyed in his ecstatic flight through things unheard of, unnameable: other horrible workers will come; they will begin at the horizons where the first one has fallen!

Although that is only one opinion of many on a poet's definition.^[2]

William Wordsworth once described the poet's task as to

make A present joy the matter of a song, Pour forth that day my soul in measured strains That would not be forgotten and are here Recorded

(The Prelude Book 1)

Marianne Moore famously described the poet's job as creating 'imaginary gardens with real toads in them'.(Poetry)

Many poets such as Virgil in the Aeneid and John Milton in Paradise Lost invoke the aid of a Muse to help them in their tasks.

See also[link]

Poetry portal

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Poets

Look up poet in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: poets

• Bard
• List of poets
• Lyricist
• Poet Laureate
• Writer

References[link]

This article includes inline citations, but they are not properly formatted. Please improve this article by correcting them. (January 2012)

Frank Mills (born June 27, 1942 in Toronto, Ontario), is a Canadian pianist and recording artist, best known for his solo instrumental hit "Music Box Dancer".

Mills grew up in Verdun, Quebec^[1] and started playing piano at age 3. He attended McGill University^[1] for five years. He started in Engineering, switched to a B.Sc. programme, then Arts and finally with the Department of Music. He entertained his fraternity brothers (Delta Upsilon) with songs from ragtime to a new artist Bob Dylan. The fraternity piano had thumbtacks on every hammer and produced a unique sound. In the late 1960s Mills became a member of The Bells. He left the band in 1971 just before it had international success with the single "Stay Awhile."

Mills worked as a pianist for CBC-TV^[1] and recorded his first solo album, Seven Of My Songs, which produced the hit single "Love Me, Love Me Love." The song made its debut on the Canadian charts in October 1971 and early the following year peaked at #46 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #8 on Billboard's Easy Listening chart^[2] His followup single, a cover of Ricky Nelson's "Poor Little Fool" made Top 25 in Canada but stalled at #106 in the U.S.

Mills released an album in 1974 that featured "Music Box Dancer", but it was not a hit initially. When he re-signed with Polydor Records Canada in 1978, the label released a new song as a single, with "Music Box Dancer" on the B-side. The single was sent to easy listening stations in Canada, but a copy was sent in error to CFRA-AM, a pop station in Ottawa. The program director played the A-side and couldn't figure out why it had been sent to his station, so he played the B-side to see if the record was mistakenly marked. He liked "Music Box Dancer" and added it to his station's playlist, turning the record into a Canadian hit. Iconic Ottawa Valley radio personality Dave "50,000" Watts gave the record extensive airplay on the station.^[3] The album went gold in Canada, which prompted Polydor in the US to release the album and single.

In Nashville, news producer Bob Parker at WNGE-TV began playing the song over the closing credits of the newscast. Nashville DJs quickly latched on and both the single and album were hits. The million-selling Gold-certified single reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the spring of 1979 as well as #4 on the Billboard Easy Listening chart,^[4] while the album reached #21 on the Billboard Top Album chart ^[5] and also went gold. Polydor awarded a gold record to TV station WNGE for breaking the single in the U.S.

It was Mills' only U.S. Top 40 pop hit; the follow-up, another piano instrumental titled "Peter Piper", peaked at #48 on the Billboard Hot 100 although it was a popular Top 10 hit on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart.^[6] Mills managed one final Adult Contemporary chart entry, "Happy Song", which peaked at #41 at the beginning of 1981.^[7]

Mills won two Juno Awards in 1980 for "Peter Piper", one for Composer of the Year and one for Instrumental Artist of the Year. He again won in the latter category in 1981.

He continued to release albums until the early 1990s, and in 2010 announced a Christmas tour with Canadian singer Rita MacNeil.

Sheet music[link]

Music Box Dancer[link]

The sheet music version of "Music Box Dancer" has sold in excess of 3 million copies.^{[citation needed]} It is published by Music Box Dancer Publications which is a subsidiary of Mayfair Montgomery Publishing.^{[citation needed]}

Other[link]

• Somewhere a Child Is Sleeping: A Christmas Song (SATB with Piano)

Film and television appearances[link]

"Music Box Dancer" was for a while, the theme song of the local Los Angeles CBS half hour TV documentary show "2 on the Town" back in 1979 through the early 1980s.

"Music Box Dancer" has been heard on an episode of The Simpsons and in the Kill Bill movies. It was used as the theme tune to the BBC2 golf programme, A Round with Alliss.

There is a song in the musical Hair called Frank Mills, although the number has nothing to do with this artist.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official site

Adam Deacon (born 4 March 1983) is a British actor, rapper, writer and director. He is best known for his lead role in the film Kidulthood.^[1]

Background[link]

Deacon was brought up by his British mother in Stoke Newington, Hackney, North-East London. His father left when he was two years old, and to this date, the pair have never had any contact.^[2]

Acting[link]

Although his acting career began with guest appearances in Ali G Indahouse and The Bill, Deacon's major breakthrough came when he landed a starring role in the urban drama film Kidulthood. Since, he has worked with Kidulthood writer Noel Clarke on a number of other projects, including the sequel Adulthood, spin-off 4.3.2.1, and the one-off television pilot West 10 LDN. When Deacon became increasingly frustrated with what he felt was a 'glass ceiling' above him in his acting career, he took matters in his own hands by co-writing, co-directing and playing the lead role in his own urban comedy, Anuvahood.^[3] The film is described as, "a pulls-no-punches, coming-of-age story, centring on one directionless hopeless 'shotter', who finds his true worth in the face of urban adversity."^[3][4] Following this, Time Out magazine labelled Deacon "The New Face of Youth Cinema".^[5] In February 2012, he won the BAFTA Rising Star Award for his work on Anuvahood.

Filmography[link]

Film[link]

Television[link]

Music videos[link]

Music career[link]

Deacon has recorded a number of his own songs and contributed material to the soundtracks of his films. He occasionally appears as a guest on Tim Westwood's Radio 1 show, introducing his own selection of tracks.

Songs

References[link]

External links[link]

• Adam Deacon at the Internet Movie Database
• – Film review: Adulthood, The Scotsman
• – Dizzee Rascal on Adulthood soundtrack
• Guardian interview with Deacon. "Adam Deacon: 'I was too street and too scary for directors'" 19 February 2012.
• "Adam Deacon: Streetwise star who knows the score". Interview with the Independent. 22 February 2012

Saul Stacey Williams (born February 29, 1972) is an American poet, writer, actor and musician known for his blend of poetry and alternative hip hop and for his leading role in the 1998 independent film Slam.

Biography[link]

The youngest of three children, Williams was born in Newburgh, New York. He attended Newburgh Free Academy for high school, where he would write his song "Black Stacey." After graduating from Morehouse College with a B.A. in acting and philosophy, Williams moved to New York City to earn an MFA in Acting from New York University's prestigious Graduate Acting Program at the Tisch School of the Arts.^[1][2] There he found himself at the center of the New York cafe poetry scene.

Williams and artist Marcia Jones began their relationship in 1995 as collaborative artists on the Brooklyn performance art and spoken word circuit. Their daughter, Saturn, was born in 1996.^[3] His collection of poems S/HE is a series of reflections on the demise of the relationship.^[4] Marcia Jones,^[5] a visual artist and art professor, created the cover artwork for The Seventh Octave, images throughout S/HE in response to Williams, and set-designed his 2001 album Amethyst Rock Star. Saturn has recently been performing with her father on his 2008 concert tour.^{[6] [7]}

On his 36th birthday, February 29, 2008, Williams married his girlfriend of five years, actress Persia White. Williams met White in 2003 when he made a guest appearance on the TV show Girlfriends as a poet named Sivad. (1993).^[8][9] On January 17, 2009, White announced via her Myspace blog that she and Williams were no longer together.^[10]

Williams is a vegan.^[11]

Career[link]

By 1995, he had become an open mic poet and, in 1996, he won the title of Nuyorican Poets Cafe's Grand Slam Champion. The documentary film SlamNation follows Williams and the other members of the 1996 Nuyorican Poets Slam team (Beau Sia, Mums da Schemer and Jessica Care Moore) as they compete in the 1996 National Poetry Slam held in Portland, Oregon.

The following year, Williams landed the lead role in the 1998 feature film Slam. Williams featured as both a writer and actor^[12] on the film, which would win both the Sundance Festival Grand Jury Prize and the Cannes Camera D'Or (Golden Camera)^[13] and serve to introduce Williams to international audiences.

Williams was at this time breaking into music. He had performed with such artists as Nas, The Fugees, Christian Alvarez, Blackalicious, Erykah Badu, KRS-One, Zack De La Rocha, De La Soul, and DJ Krust, as well as poets Allen Ginsberg and Sonia Sanchez. After releasing a string of EPs, in 2001 he released the LP Amethyst Rock Star with producer Rick Rubin and in September 2004 his self-titled album to much acclaim. He played several shows supporting Nine Inch Nails on their European tour in summer 2005, and has also supported The Mars Volta.

Williams was also invited to the Lollapalooza music festival in Summer 2005. The Chicago stage allowed Williams to attract a wider audience. He also appeared on NIN's album Year Zero, and supported the group on their 2006 North American tour. On the tour Williams announced that Trent Reznor would co-produce his next album.^[14]

This collaboration resulted in 2007's The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!. This album was available only at the website until a physical CD of the album was issued. The physical release included new tracks and extended album artwork.^[15] The first 100,000 customers on the website had the option to download a free lower-quality audio version of the album. The other option was for users to pay $5 to support the artist directly and be given the choice of downloading the higher-quality MP3 version or the lossless FLAC version. The material has been produced by Trent Reznor and mixed by Alan Moulder. It was Reznor who said that, after his own recent dealings with record labels, they should release it independently and directly.^[16]

As a writer, Williams has been published in The New York Times, Esquire, Bomb Magazine and African Voices, as well as having released four collections of poetry. As a poet and musician, Williams has toured and lectured across the world, appearing at many universities and colleges. In his interview in the book, Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam, Williams explained why he creates within so many genres, saying:

Williams is a vocal critic of the War on Terrorism and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan;^[18] among his better-known works are the anti-war anthems "Not In My Name" and "Act III Scene 2 (Shakespeare)". In early 2008, a Nike Sparq Training commercial featured Williams's song "List of Demands (Reparations)".

In a November 2008 interview with Wired.com, Williams talked about his forthcoming projects:

...but there's one [album] that I'm waist-deep into. I'm aiming to finish it up next month. Trent wants to work on a sequel for Niggy that I think would be cool and I also have an album and new songs demoed at home that I'm ready to go into the studio and lay down. It’s a complete reflection of how I feel in this country; it's a very transformative time.^[19]

In January 2009, he released NGH WHT – The Dead Emcee Scrolls with The Arditti Quartet, a reading of his 2006 poetry book of the same name. This collaboration with Thomas Kessler (who also set ,said the shotgun to the head to music) is released with two payment options: listeners may download Chapters 18-22 of the 27-minute composition for free (in mp3 format), or for $6, can download the entire 33-chapter composition in lossless .aif format, along with the isolated vocal and quartet multitrack stems. The entire paid download totals in size at 563 Megabyte.^[20]

He currently resides in Paris, France. He has contributed to two tracks on the 2011 album Baba Love by French musician Arthur H.^[21]

Williams latest album, Volcanic Sunlight' was released November 11, 2011. Williams showcased the album at London's Hoxton Bar Kitchen on January 26, 2011. Livemusic.fm interviewed Williams on the evening and made a subsequent film. Artist Alex Templeton-Ward produced the film. When Williams was asked what the point of poetry was he said: "I'm making this up, I have no idea but here we go, I think that it would be to express, to share, to relieve, to explore", "for me poetry offers some what of a cathartic experience. I am able to move through emotions and emotional experience particularly, you know, break-ups, difficulties in all the things that I may face, whether that is with an industry or a loved one or whomever, there needs to be an infiltration process, like you have a window open over there. That is the purpose of poetry – it is the window that opens that allows some air in, some other insight, some other possibility so we can explore all that we feel, all that we think but with the space to see more than what we know, because there is so much more than we know", "If I didn't open myself to the possibilities of the unknown then I would be lost."

Discography[link]

Albums/EPs[link]

• Penny for a Thought / Purple Pigeons (2000)
• Amethyst Rock Star (2001)
• Not in My Name (2003)
• Saul Williams (2004)
• The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust! (2007)
• NGH WHT – The Dead Emcee Scrolls with The Arditti Quartet (2009)
• Volcanic Sunlight (2011)

Guest and compilation appearances[link]

• "Twice the First Time" on Eargasms – Crucialpoetics Vol. 1 (1997)
• "Elohim (1972)" on Black Whole Styles (1998)
• "Ohm" on Lyricist Lounge, Volume One (1999)
• "Coded Language" on Coded Language by DJ Krust (1999)
• "Release" with Lyrics Born and Zack De La Rocha on Blazing Arrow by Blackalicious (2002)
• "Time (Jungle) (Temple Of Soul Mix)" on Nublu Sessions, mixed by Wax Poetic (2003)
• "Sent from Sandy Shores" (with Sacajawea) on Dreams of Water Themes by Adventure Time (2003)
• "Wake up Show Freestyles" by Sway and King Tech (2004)
• "Three Fingers" on Enter the Chicken by Buckethead & Friends (2005)
• "Sea Lion (Extended)" (with Will Oldham) on "Sea Lion" by Sage Francis (2005)
• "Mr. Nichols" on Sound Mirrors by Coldcut (2006)
• "April Showers, April Tears" on ¿What by Stuart Davis (2006)
• ",said the shotgun to the head" on Thomas Kessler by Thomas Kessler (2006)
• "Survivalism" and "Me, I'm Not" on Year Zero by Nine Inch Nails (2007)
• "Gunshots By Computer" and "Survivalism" on Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D by Nine Inch Nails (2007)
• "Lyrical Gunplay" on Thru by Thavius Beck
• "Dance Of The Dead" on The Unbound Project, Vol. 1 a compilation benefit album for Mumia Abu-Jamal
• "List Of Demands" on Nike Sparq Commercial
• "Black Stacy Remix" ft. Nas
• "U Can Do It" (with Maeckes) on "KIDS" by Maeckes (2010)
• "Dance or Die" on The ArchAndroid by Janelle Monáe (2010)

Bibliography[link]

• The Seventh Octave, 1998, Moore Black Press ISBN 0-9658308-1-0
• She, 1999, MTV/Pocketbooks ISBN 0-671-03977-6
• Said the Shotgun to the Head, 2003, MTV/Pocketbooks ISBN 0-7434-7079-6
• The Dead Emcee Scrolls, 2006, MTV/Pocketbooks ISBN 1-4165-1632-8
• Chorus, 2012, MTV Books ISBN 1-4516-4983-5 ^[22]

Filmography[link]

• Downtown 81 (voice) (1981/2000)
• Underground Voices (1996)
• Slam (1998)
• SlamNation (1998)
• I'll Make Me a World (1999)
• King Of The Korner (2000)
• K-PAX (2001)
• The N Word (2004)
• Lackawanna Blues (2005)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official Site
• Saul Williams at Discogs
• Saul Williams at the Internet Movie Database
• Saul Williams: Volcanic Sunlight

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2012)

Pablo Neruda
Born	Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto (1904-07-12)July 12, 1904 Parral, Chile
Died	September 23, 1973(1973-09-23) (aged 69) Santiago, Chile
Occupation	Poet, Diplomat
Nationality	Chilean
Notable award(s)	Nobel Prize in Literature 1971
Signature

Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973) was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda.

Neruda became known as a poet while still a teenager. He wrote in a variety of styles including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and erotically-charged love poems such as the ones in his 1924 collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. In 1971 Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez once called him "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language."^[1] Neruda always wrote in green ink as it was his personal colour of hope.

On July 15, 1945, at Pacaembu Stadium in São Paulo, Brazil, he read to 100,000 people in honor of Communist revolutionary leader Luís Carlos Prestes.^[2] During his lifetime, Neruda occupied many diplomatic positions and served a stint as a senator for the Chilean Communist Party. When Chilean President González Videla outlawed communism in Chile in 1948, a warrant was issued for Neruda's arrest. Friends hid him for months in a house basement in the Chilean port of Valparaíso. Later, Neruda escaped into exile through a mountain pass near Maihue Lake into Argentina. Years later, Neruda was a close collaborator to socialist President Salvador Allende. When Neruda returned to Chile after his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Allende invited him to read at the Estadio Nacional before 70,000 people.^[3]

Neruda was hospitalised with cancer at the time of the Chilean coup d'état led by Augusto Pinochet. Three days after being hospitalised, Neruda died of heart failure; however, there are doubts as to whether or not the junta had a hand in his death. Already a legend in life, Neruda's death reverberated around the world. Pinochet had denied permission to transform Neruda's funeral into a public event. However, thousands of grieving Chileans disobeyed the curfew and crowded the streets.

Life and career[link]

Early years[link]

Neftalí Reyes Basoalto was born on July 12, 1904 in Parral, Chile, a city in Linares Province in the Maule Region, some 350 km south of Santiago^[4] to José del Carmen Reyes Morales, a railway employee, and Rosa Basoalto, a school teacher who died two months after he was born. Neruda and his father soon moved to Temuco, where his father married Trinidad Candia Marverde, a woman with whom he had a child nine years earlier, a boy named Rodolfo.^[5] Neruda also grew up with his half-sister Laura, one of his father's children by another woman. On September 26, 1904 the young Neruda was christened "Neftalí", his late mother's middle name. In the winter of 1914, Neruda composed his first poems.

Early career[link]

Neruda's father opposed his son's interest in writing and literature, but Neruda received encouragement from others, including future Nobel Prize winner Gabriela Mistral, who headed the local girls' school. On July 18, 1917, at the age of thirteen, he published his first work, an essay entitled Entusiasmo y perseverancia (Enthusiasm and Perseverance) in the local daily newspaper, La Mañana, signed Neftalí Reyes.^[7] From 1918 to mid-1920 he published numerous poems such as "Mis ojos" ("My eyes") and essays in local magazines as Neftali Reyes. In 1919, he participated in the literary contest Juegos Florales del Maule where he won third place for his poem "Comunión ideal" or "Nocturno ideal". By mid-1920, when he adopted the pseudonym of Pablo Neruda, he was a published author of poetry, prose, and journalism. The young poet wanted to find a name that would mislead his father. "Neruda" originated from the Czech poet Jan Neruda. Years later, Pablo Neruda in recognition of the Czech poet, left a flower at the foot of his statue in Prague “Confieso que he vivido”. The first name Pablo is thought to be inspired by the French poet Paul Verlaine.

In 1921, at the age of 16, Neruda moved to Santiago^[6] to study French at the Universidad de Chile with the intention of becoming a teacher, but soon Neruda was devoting himself full time to poetry. In 1923, his first volume of verse, Crepusculario (Book of Twilights), was published, followed the next year by Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair),^[6] a collection of love poems that was controversial for its eroticism, especially considering its author's young age. Both works were critically acclaimed and were translated into many languages. Over the decades, Veinte poemas would sell millions of copies and become Neruda's best-known work, though it did not go to a second edition until 1932.^[6] By the age of 20, Neruda had established an international reputation as a poet, but was facing poverty.^[6] In 1926, he published the collection Tentativa del hombre infinito (The trying of infinite man) and the novel Tentativa y su esperanza (The inhabitant and his hope).^[8] In 1927, out of financial desperation, he took an honorary consulship in Rangoon, then a part of colonial Burma and a place of which he had never heard before.^[8] Later, mired in isolation and loneliness, he worked stints in Colombo (Ceylon), Batavia (Java), and Singapore.^[8] In Java he met and married his first wife, a Dutch bank employee named Maryka Antonieta Hagenaar Vogelzang. While on diplomatic service, Neruda read large amounts of poetry and experimented with many different poetic forms. He wrote the first two volumes of Residencia En La Tierra, which included many surrealistic poems.

Spanish Civil War[link]

After returning to Chile, Neruda was given diplomatic posts in Buenos Aires and then Barcelona, Spain.^[9] He later replaced Gabriela Mistral as consul in Madrid, where he became the center of a lively literary circle, befriending such writers as Rafael Alberti, Federico García Lorca, and the Peruvian poet César Vallejo.^[9] A daughter, Malva Marina Trinidad, was born in Madrid in 1934; she was to be plagued with health problems, especially hydrocephalus, during her short life.^[10] During this period, Neruda became slowly estranged from his wife and began a relationship with Delia del Carril, an Argentine twenty years his senior.

As Spain became engulfed in civil war, Neruda became intensely politicised for the first time. His experiences of the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath moved him away from distinctive, privately focused work in the direction of collective obligation. Neruda became an ardent communist, and remained so for the rest of his life. The radical leftist politics of his literary friends, as well as that of del Carril, were contributing factors, but the most important catalyst was the execution of García Lorca by forces loyal to the Spanish dictator Franco.^[9] By means of his speeches and writings, Neruda threw his support behind the Republican side, publishing the collection España en el corazón (Spain in The Heart, 1938). Consequently, he lost his post as consul due to his political militancy.^[9] Neruda's marriage broke down and couple divorced in 1936. She moved to Monte Carlo and then to the Netherlands with their only child, and he would never see either of them again.^[11] After leaving his wife, he lived with Delia del Carril in France.

Following the election in 1938 of President Pedro Aguirre Cerda, whom Neruda supported, the poet was appointed special consul for Spanish emigration in Paris. There Neruda was given responsibility for what he called "the noblest mission I have ever undertaken": shipping 2,000 Spanish refugees, who had been housed by the French in squalid camps, to Chile on an old boat called the Winnipeg.^[12] Neruda is sometimes charged with only selecting communists for emigration while excluding others who had fought on the side of the Republic.^[13] Others deny these accusations, pointing out that Neruda chose only a few hundred of the refugees personally; the rest were selected by the Service for the Evacuation of Spanish Refugees, set up by Juan Negrín, president of the Spanish Republican government in Exile.

Mexican appointment[link]

Neruda's next diplomatic post was as Consul General in Mexico City, where he spent the years 1940 to 1943.^[14] While in Mexico, he married del Carril, and learned that his daughter Malva had died, age eight, in Nazi-occupied Netherlands from various health problems.^[14] He also became a friend of the Stalinist assassin Vittorio Vidali.

After the failed 1940 assassination attempt against Leon Trotsky, Neruda arranged a Chilean visa for the Mexican painter David Alfaro Siqueiros who was accused of having been one of the assassination conspirators.^[15] Neruda later said he did it at the request of Mexican President Manuel Ávila Camacho. This enabled Siqueiros, then jailed, to leave Mexico for Chile, where he stayed at Neruda's private residence. In exchange for Neruda's assistance, Siqueiros spent over a year painting a mural in a school in Chillán. Neruda's relationship with Siqueiros attracted criticism and Neruda dismissed the allegations that his intent had been to help an assassin as "sensationalist politico-literary harassment". In Mexico, Pablo Neruda met the famous Mexican writer Octavio Paz with whom he nearly came to blows in 1942.^[16]

Return to Chile[link]

In 1943, following his return to Chile, Neruda made a tour of Peru, where he visited Machu Picchu.^[17] The austere beauty of the Inca citadel later inspired Alturas de Macchu Picchu, a book-length poem in twelve parts which he completed in 1945 and which marked a growing awareness and interest in the ancient civilizations of the Americas: themes he was to explore further in Canto General. In this work, Neruda celebrated the achievement of Machu Picchu, but also condemned the slavery which had made it possible. In the Canto XII, he called upon the dead of many centuries to be born again and to speak through him. Martín Espada, poet and professor of creative writing at the University of Massachusetts, has hailed the work as a masterpiece, declaring that "there is no greater political poem".

Communism[link]

Bolstered by his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, Neruda, like many left-leaning intellectuals of his generation, came to admire the Soviet Union of Joseph Stalin, partly for the role it played in defeating Nazi Germany.^[18] This is echoed in poems such as "Canto a Stalingrado" (1942) and "Nuevo canto de amor a Stalingrado" (1943). In 1953 Neruda was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize. On Stalin's death that same year, Neruda wrote an ode to him, as he also (during World War II) wrote poetry in praise of Fulgencio Batista "Saludo a Batista", ("Salute to Batista") and later to Fidel Castro. His fervent Stalinism eventually drove a wedge between Neruda and longtime friend Octavio Paz who commented that "Neruda became more and more Stalinist, while I became less and less enchanted with Stalin".^[19] Their differences came to a head after the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact when they almost came to blows in an argument over Stalin. Although Paz still considered Neruda "the greatest poet of his generation", in an essay on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn he wrote that when he thinks of "Neruda and other famous Stalinist writers and poets, I feel the gooseflesh that I get from reading certain passages of the Inferno. No doubt they began in good faith [...] but insensibly, commitment by commitment, they saw themselves becoming entangled in a mesh of lies, falsehoods, deceits and perjuries, until they lost their souls".^[20] Neruda called Lenin the "great genius of this century". His speech of June 5, 1946) gives a tribute to the late Soviet leader Mikhail Kalinin, who for Neruda was "man of noble life", "the great constructor of the future", and "a comrade of arms of Lenin and Stalin".^[21]

Neruda later came to rue his support of the Soviet leader; after Nikita Khrushchev's famous Secret Speech at the Soviet 20th Party Congress in 1956, which denounced the "cult of personality" that surrounded Stalin and accused him of committing crimes during the Great Purges, Neruda wrote in his memoirs "I had contributed to my share to the personality cult," explaining that "in those days, Stalin seemed to us the conqueror who had crushed Hitler's armies".^[18] Of a subsequent visit to China in 1957, Neruda would write: "What has estranged me from the Chinese revolutionary process has not been Mao Tse-tung but Mao Tse-tungism", which he dubbed Mao Tse-Stalinism: "the repetition of a cult of a Socialist deity".^[18] However, despite his disillusionment with Stalin, Neruda never lost his essential faith in communist theory and remained loyal to "the Party". Anxious not to give ammunition to his ideological enemies, he would later refuse publicly to condemn the Soviet repression of dissident writers like Boris Pasternak and Joseph Brodsky: an attitude with which even some of his staunchest admirers disagreed.^[22]

Wikisource has original text related to this article: I Accuse

On March 4, 1945 Neruda was elected a Communist party senator for the northern provinces of Antofagasta and Tarapacá in the arid and inhospitable Atacama Desert.^[23][24] He officially joined the Communist Party of Chile four months later.^[14] In 1946, Radical Party presidential candidate Gabriel González Videla asked Neruda to act as his campaign manager. González Videla was supported by a coalition of left-wing parties and Neruda fervently campaigned on his behalf. Once in office, however, González Videla turned against the Communist Party and issued the Law of Permanent Defense of the Democracy. The breaking point for Senator Neruda was the violent repression of a Communist-led miners' strike in Lota on October 1947, where striking workers were herded into island military prisons and a concentration camp in the town of Pisagua. Neruda's criticism of González Videla culminated in a dramatic speech in the Chilean senate on January 6, 1948, which became known as "Yo acuso" ("I accuse"), in the course of which he read out the names of the miners and their families who were imprisoned at the concentration camp.^[25]

During the late 1960s, Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges was asked for his opinion of Pablo Neruda. Borges stated, "I think of him as a very fine poet, a very fine poet. I don't admire him as a man, I think of him as a very mean man."^[26] He said that Neruda had not spoken out against Perón because he was afraid to risk his reputation, noting "I was an Argentine poet, he was a Chilean poet, he's on the side of the Communists, I'm against them. So I felt he was behaving very wisely in avoiding a meeting that would have been quite uncomfortable for both of us."^[27]

Exile[link]

A few weeks later in 1948, finding himself threatened with arrest, Neruda went into hiding and he and his wife were smuggled from house to house hidden by supporters and admirers for the next thirteen months.^[14] While in hiding, Senator Neruda was removed from office and in September 1948 the Communist Party was banned altogether under the Ley de Defensa Permanente de la Democracia (Law for the Permanent Defense of Democracy), called by critics the Ley Maldita (Accursed Law), which eliminated over 26,000 people from the electoral registers, thus stripping them of their right to vote. Neruda moved later to Valdivia in southern Chile. From Valdivia he moved to Fundo Huishue a forestry estate in the vicinities of Huishue Lake. Neruda's life underground ended in March 1949 when he fled over the Lilpela Pass on the Andes Mountains to Argentina on horseback. He would dramatically recount his escape from Chile in his Nobel Prize lecture.

Once out of Chile, he spent the next three years in exile.^[14] In Buenos Aires, Neruda took advantage of the slight resemblance between him and his friend, the future Nobel Prize-winning novelist and cultural attaché to the Guatemalan embassy, Miguel Ángel Asturias, to travel to Europe using Asturias's passport.^[29] Pablo Picasso arranged his entrance into Paris and Neruda made a surprise appearance there to a stunned World Congress of Peace Forces^{[clarification needed]}, while the Chilean government denied that the poet could have escaped the country.^[29] Neruda spent those three years traveling extensively throughout Europe as well as taking trips to India, China, Sri Lanka and the Soviet Union. His trip to Mexico in late 1949 was lengthened due to a serious bout of phlebitis.^[30] A Chilean singer named Matilde Urrutia was hired to care for him and they began an affair that would, years later, culminate in marriage.^[30] During his exile, Urrutia would travel from country to country shadowing him and they would arrange meetings whenever they could. Matilde Urrutia was the muse for "Los versos del Capitán", which he later published anonymously in 1952.

While in Mexico, Neruda also published his lengthy epic poem Canto General, a Whitmanesque catalog of the history, geography, and flora and fauna of South America, accompanied by Neruda's observations and experiences. Many of them dealt with his time underground in Chile, which is when he composed much of the poem. In fact, he had carried the manuscript with him on his escape on horseback. A month later, a different edition of five thousand copies was boldly published in Chile by the outlawed Communist Party based on a manuscript Neruda had left behind. In Mexico, he was granted honorary Mexican citizenship.^[31] Neruda's 1952 stay in a villa owned by Italian historian Edwin Cerio on the island of Capri was fictionalized in Antonio Skarmeta's 1985 novel Ardiente Paciencia (Ardent Patience, later known as El cartero de Neruda, or Neruda's Postman), which inspired the popular film Il Postino ("The Postman", 1994).^[32]

Second return to Chile[link]

Neruda recording his poetry at the U.S. Library of Congress in 1966.

By 1952, the González-Videla government was on its last legs, weakened by corruption scandals. The Chilean Socialist Party was in the process of nominating Salvador Allende as its candidate for the September 1952 presidential elections and was keen to have the presence of Neruda, by now Chile's most prominent left-wing literary figure, to support the campaign.^[31] Neruda returned to Chile in August of that year and rejoined Delia del Carril, who had travelled ahead of him some months earlier, but the marriage was crumbling. Del Carril eventually learned of his affair with Matilde Urrutia and he sent her back to Chile in 1955. She convinced the Chilean officials to lift his arrest allowing Urrutia and Neruda to go to Capri, Italy. Now united with Urrutia, Neruda would, aside from many foreign trips and a stint as Allende's ambassador to France from 1970 to 1973, spend the rest of his life in Chile.

By this time, Neruda enjoyed worldwide fame as a poet, and his books were being translated into virtually all the major languages of the world.^[14] He vigorously denounced the U.S. during the Cuban missile crisis and later in the decade he would likewise repeatedly condemn the U.S. for the Vietnam War. But being one of the most prestigious and outspoken left-wing intellectuals alive, he also attracted opposition from ideological opponents. The Congress for Cultural Freedom, an anti-communist organization covertly established and funded by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, adopted Neruda as one of its primary targets and launched a campaign to undermine his reputation, reviving the old claim he had been an accomplice in the attack on Trotsky in Mexico City in 1940.^[33] The campaign became more intense when it became known that Neruda was a candidate for the 1964 Nobel prize, which was eventually awarded to Jean-Paul Sartre.^[34]

La Sebastiana, Neruda's house in Valparaíso

In 1966, Neruda was invited to attend an International PEN conference in New York City.^[35] Officially, he was barred from entering the U.S. because he was a communist, but the conference organizer, playwright Arthur Miller, eventually prevailed upon the Johnson Administration to grant Neruda a visa.^[35] Neruda gave readings to packed halls, and even recorded some poems for the Library of Congress.^[35] Miller later opined that Neruda's adherence to his communist ideals of the 1930s was a result of his protracted exclusion from "bourgeois society". Due to the presence of many Eastern Bloc writers, Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes later wrote that the PEN conference marked a "beginning of the end" of the Cold War.^[35]

Upon Neruda's return to Chile, he stopped in Peru, where he gave readings to enthusiastic crowds in Lima and Arequipa and was received by President Fernando Belaúnde Terry.^[35] However, this visit also prompted an unpleasant backlash; because the Peruvian government had come out against the government of Fidel Castro in Cuba, July 1966 saw more then one hundred Cuban intellectuals retaliate against the poet by signing a letter that charged Neruda with colluding with the enemy, calling him an example of the "tepid, pro-Yankee revisionism" then prevalent in Latin America. The affair was particularly painful for Neruda because of his previous outspoken support for the Cuban revolution, and he never visited the island again, even after receiving an invitation in 1968.

After the death of Che Guevara in Bolivia in 1967, Neruda wrote several articles regretting the loss of a "great hero".^[36] At the same time, he told his friend Aida Figueroa not to cry for Che, but for Luis Emilio Recabarren, the father of the Chilean communist movement, who preached a pacifist revolution over Che's violent ways.^[37]

Last years[link]

La Chascona, Neruda's house in Santiago.

In 1970, Neruda was nominated as a candidate for the Chilean presidency, but ended up giving his support to Salvador Allende, who later won the election and was inaugurated in 1970 as the first democratically elected socialist head of state.^[31][38] Shortly thereafter, Allende appointed Neruda the Chilean ambassador to France, lasting from 1970–1972; his final diplomatic posting. During his stint in Paris, Neruda helped to renegotiate the external debt of Chile, billions owed to European and American banks, but within months of his arrival in Paris his health began to deteriorate.^[31] Neruda returned to Chile two and half years later due to his failing health.

In 1971, Neruda was awarded the Nobel Prize,^[31] a decision that did not come easily because some of the committee members had not forgotten Neruda's past praise of Stalinist dictatorship. But his Swedish translator, Artur Lundkvist, did his best to ensure the Chilean received the prize.^[39] "A poet", Neruda stated in his Stockholm speech of acceptance of the Nobel Prize, "is at the same time a force for solidarity and for solitude."^[40] The following year Neruda was awarded the prestigious Golden Wreath Award at the Struga Poetry Evenings.

As the coup d'etat of 1973 unfolded, Neruda, then diagnosed with prostate cancer, was devastated by the mounting attacks on the Allende government.^[31] The military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet on September 11 saw Neruda's hopes for a Marxist Chile destroyed. Shortly thereafter, during a search of the house and grounds at Isla Negra by Chilean armed forces at which Neruda was present, the poet famously remarked: "Look around—there's only one thing of danger for you here—poetry." ^[41]

Neruda died of heart failure on the evening of September 23, 1973, at Santiago's Santa María Clinic;^[42][43][44] The funeral took place amidst a massive police presence, and mourners took advantage of the occasion to protest against the new regime, established just a couple of weeks before. Neruda's house was broken into and his papers and books taken or destroyed. ^[31]

In 1974 his Memoirs appeared under the title I Confess I Have Lived, updated to the last days of the poet’s life, and including a final segment describing the death of Salvador Allende during the storming of the Moneda Palace by Pinochet and other generals – occurring only twelve days before Neruda died.^[31] Matilde Urrutia subsequently compiled and edited for publication the memoirs and possibly his final poem "Right Comrade, It's the Hour of the Garden". These and other activities brought her into conflict with Pinochet's government, which continually sought to curtail Neruda's influence on the Chilean collective consciousness. Urrutia's own memoir, My Life with Pablo Neruda, was published posthumously in 1986.^[45] Manuel Arraya, his Communist Party-appointed chauffeur published a book about Neruda's final days in 2012.^[46]

In June 2011, a Chilean judge ordered that an investigation be launched following suggestions that Neruda may have been poisoned by the Pinochet regime for his pro-Allende stance and political views at the time of his death.^[47] In December 2011 Chile's Communist Party asked Chilean Judge Mario Carroza to order the exhumation of the remains of the famed poet. Carroza has been conducting probes into hundreds of deaths allegedly connected to abuses of Pinochet's regime from 1973 to 1990.^[48] In 2012, the Chilean courts are continuing to re-examine Neruda's death. ^[46]

Legacy[link]

Neruda owned three houses in Chile; today they are all open to the public as museums: La Chascona in Santiago, La Sebastiana in Valparaíso, and Casa de Isla Negra in Isla Negra, where he and Matilde Urrutia are buried. A bust of Neruda stands on the south side of the Organization of American States building in Washington D.C.

Music[link]

• Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis set to music the Canto General.
• Austrian avantgarde composer Michael Gielen set to music Un Día Sobresale (Ein Tag Tritt Hervor. Pentaphonie für obligates Klavier, fünf Soloinstrumente und fünf Gruppen zu je fünf Musikern mit Worten von Pablo Neruda. 1960-3).
• Mexican composer Daniel Catán wrote an opera Il Postino (2010), whose premiere production featured Spanish tenor Plácido Domingo portraying Pablo Neruda.
• Folk rock / progressive rock group Los Jaivas, famous in Chile, used Las Alturas de Macchu Picchu as the text for their album of the same name.
• Peter Lieberson composed Neruda Songs (2005) and Songs of Love and Sorrow (2010) based on Cien Sonetos de Amor.^[49]
• Jazz vocalist Luciana Souza released an album called "Neruda" (2004) featuring 10 of Neruda's poems set to the music of Federico Mompou.
• The South African musician Johnny Clegg drew heavily on Neruda in his early work with the band Juluka.
• On the back on Jackson Browne's album The Pretender, there is a poem by Neruda
• Canadian rock group Red Rider named their 1983 LP/CD release, Neruda.
• Pop band Sixpence None the Richer set his poem "Puedo Escribir" to music on their platinum selling self-titled album (1997).
• The group Brazilian Girls turned "Poema 15" ("Poem 15") from Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (20 love poems and a song of despair) into their song "Me Gusta Cuando Callas" from their self-titled album.
• With permission from the Fundación Neruda, Marco Katz composed a song cycle based on the volume Piedras del cielo for voice and piano.^[50]
• The Occitan singer Joanda composed the song Pablo Neruda ^[51]
• American contemporary composer Morten Lauridsen set Neruda's poem "Soneto de la Noche" to music as part of his cycle "Nocturnes" from 2005.
• Juan Luis Guerra credits Neruda for two phrases for his song, "Bachata Rosa".^[52]
• Ezequiel Vinao composed "Sonetos de Amor" (2011) a song cycle based on Neruda's love poems.

Literature[link]

• Neruda's 1952 stay in a villa on the island of Capri was fictionalized in Chilean author Antonio Skarmeta's 1985 novel Ardiente Paciencia (published as Burning Patience, later known as El cartero de Neruda, or Neruda's Postman).^[53]
• In 2008 the writer Roberto Ampuero published a novel El caso Neruda, about his private eye Cayetano Brulé, where Pablo Neruda is one of the protagonists.
• The Dreamer (2010) is a children's fictional biography of Neruda, "a shy Chilean boy whose spirit develops and thrives despite his father's relentless negativity". Written by Pam Muñoz Ryan and illustrated by Peter Sís, the text and illustrations are printed in Neruda's signature green ink.^[54]

Film[link]

• The Italian film Il Postino, inspired by Antonio Skármeta's 1985 novel Ardiente Paciencia (Ardent Patience, later known as El cartero de Neruda, or Neruda's Postman), centres on the story of Pablo Neruda (Philippe Noiret) living in exile on Salina Island near Sicily during the 1950s. While there, he befriends the local postman and inspires in him a love of poetry.
• Pablo Neruda: The Poet's Calling is a documentary film about Neruda's life, times, and poetry, directed by Mexican director Carlos Bolado and Mark Eisner.^[55]}
• Neruda is a 120 min documentary about his life and poetry including interviews with his friends like Volodia Teitelboim, Jose Balmes, Jorge Edwards, Andrej Wosnessenski, Mikis Theodorakis. This film was directed by the German filmmaker Ebbo Demant and broadcast 2004 in the European culture TV channel ARTE and the German public-service broadcaster ARD.

See also[link]

Poetry portal

• Cien Sonetos de Amor

Notes[link]

Sources[link]

• Feinstein, Adam Pablo Neruda: A Passion for Life, Bloomsbury, 2004. ISBN 1-58234-410-8
• Neruda, Pablo. Memoirs (translation of Confieso que he vivido: Memorias), translated by Hardie St. Martin, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1977. (1991 edition is ISBN 0-374-20660-0)
• Shull, Jodie. Pablo Neruda: Passion, Poetry, Politics. Enslow. ISBN 978-0-7660-2966-8. http://www.enslow.com/displayitem.asp?type=1&item=2578. 
• Tarn, Nathaniel, Ed (1975) Pablo Neruda: Selected Poems Penguin.
• Burgin, Richard (1968) Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges, Holt, Rhinehart, & Winston
• Consuelo Hernández.“El Antiorientalismo en Pablo Neruda;” Voces y perspectivas en la poesia latinoamericanana del siglo XX. Madrid: Visor 2009.

Further reading[link]

• Pablo Neruda, Selected Poems ed. Ilan Stavans 2003
• Translating Neruda: The Way to Macchu Picchu John Felstiner 1980
• Pablo Neruda. Durán, Manuel., 1981
• Pablo Neruda: all poets the poet . Bizzarro, Salvatore., 1979
• The poetry of Pablo Neruda. Costa, René de., 1979
• Pablo Neruda: Memoirs (Confieso que he vivido: Memorias) / tr. St. Martin, Hardie., 1977
• The Essential Neruda / ed. Mark Eisner, intro by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (City Lights), 2004
• "Paz and Neruda: Clash of Literary Titans". Free Online Library. July 2008. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Clash+of+literary+titans.-a0180277640.  Americas Magazine, Jaime Perales Contreras

Books of English translations of Neruda[link]

• World's End (Copper Canyon Press, 2009) (translated by William O'Daly)
• The Hands of the Day (Copper Canyon Press, 2008) (translated by William O'Daly)
• The Book of Questions (Copper Canyon Press, 1991, 2001) (translated by William O'Daly)
• The Yellow Heart (Copper Canyon Press, 1990, 2002) (translated by William O'Daly)
• Stones of the Sky (Copper Canyon Press, 1990, 2002) (translated by William O'Daly)
• The Sea and the Bells (Copper Canyon Press, 1988, 2002) (translated by William O'Daly)
• Winter Garden (Copper Canyon Press, 1987, 2002) (translated by James Nolan)
• The Separate Rose (Copper Canyon Press, 1985) (translated by William O'Daly)
• Still Another Day (Copper Canyon Press, 1984, 2005) (translated by William O'Daly)
• On the Blue Shore of Silence: Poems of the Sea (Rayo Harper Collins, 2004) (translated by Alastair Reid, epilogue Antonio Skármeta)
• Intimacies: Poems of Love (Harper Collins, 2008) (translated by Alastair Reid)
• The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems (City Lights, 2004) (translated by Robert Hass, Jack Hirschman, Mark Eisner, Forrest Gander, Stephen Mitchell, Stephen Kessler, and John Felstiner. Preface by Lawrence Ferlinghetti)

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Pablo Neruda

• Profile at the Poetry Foundation
• Profile at Poets.org with poems and articles
• Profile at Emory University
• Rita Guibert (Spring 1971). "Pablo Neruda, The Art of Poetry No. 14". The Paris Review. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4091/the-art-of-poetry-no-14-pablo-neruda. 
• Nobel Biography
• "Celebrating Chilean Poet Pablo Neruda", Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! interviews Martín Espada, poet and professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
• NPR Morning Edition on Neruda's Centennial 12 July 2004 (audio 4 mins) "Pablo Neruda's 'Poems of the Sea'" 5 April 2004 (Audio, 8 mins)
• "The ecstasist: Pablo Neruda and his passions." The New Yorker. 8 September 2003
• "Neruda, Chilean Poet-Politician, Wins Nobel Prize in Literature" New York Times 22 October 1971 and "Songs of himself" New York Times, Robert Bly 23 May 1982
• "Neruda's Chile". Daily Telegraph 18 September 2010