In the introduction to this bilingual volume, the translator reminds us: Neruda spent the last forty years of his life making himself dangerous with his poetry... He came to see poetry as a moral act, with personal and communal responsibilities. But here, Neruda is at his playful and irreverent best. Whether writing a celebration, allegory, lament or self-parody, the poet declares the strong sense of an improvisational spirit. Highlighted as Essential by Library Journal.