The Separate Rose

“This is pure Neruda at his prime, which is to say incomparable.”—Choice

“The Separate Rose represents Pablo Neruda at the peak of his art, and William O’Daly has done an important service by bringing it before American readers with such care.”—The Bloomsbury Review

The coast of Easter Island—the most isolated inhabited island in the world—is adorned with gigantic and miraculous stone statues. Neruda made a single pilgrimage to Easter Island during a poignant time in his life—he was dying of cancer and taking his life’s inventory. Out of this journey grew a sequence of poems that alternate between “Men” and “The Island,” through which Neruda observes the latest remnants of the ancient world in direct opposition to modernity. With an introduction by William O’Daly.