Ricardo Eliecer Fertali Reyes Basoalto, or better known under his pen name Pablo Neruda, was a Chilean poet, politician, and diplomat active during the 20thcentury. From the VERY young age of 13, Neruda’s writing career commenced with producing poetry, though his work spanned various styles of prose, including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and passionate love poems, which tended to be his most popular and included the collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. Throughout his life, Pablo occupied numerous diplomatic positions in his home country of Chile and served a term as a Senator for the Chilean Communist Party; however, much of the mid 20thcentury proved to be tumultuous for Chile’s government, and Neruda found himself riding the waves between politician and exile. In the later years of his life, with the return of communism, Pablo was a close advisor to Chile’s socialist President Salvadore Allende, and went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971. Not long after, Neruda met a mysterious end, one which we will dive into later which begets the question…old age, or murder? Pablo is, to this day, considered the national poet of Chile, and his works have been popular and influential on a global scale for decades. But just who was Pablo Nerdua beneath his public persona of poet and politician? Let’s find out this week on Legacy: the Artists Behind the Legends, as we discuss the fascinating life of Pablo Neruda.