Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

'Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair' is a collection of romantic poems by Pablo Neruda, a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.
This became Neruda's most popular book and immediately established his reputation. It also became one of the most widely read collections of poetry written in Spanish.
The book stands as an essential collection that continues to inspire lovers and poets around the world. The collection begins with passion, describing sensual affection that slackens into melancholy and separation in the later verses. The closing poem, "A Song of Despair," is painful and anguished.

Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda. Neruda became known as a poet when he was 13 years old, and wrote in a variety of styles, including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and passionate love poems such as the ones in his collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924). Pablo Neruda is often considered the national poet of Chile, and his works have been popular and influential worldwide. The Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez once called him "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language.