The Body Politic: The battle over Pablo Neruda’s corpse


"The were all there for Pablo Neruda, but nobody seemed to like Pablo Neruda. The members of the Chilean media had assembled on a rock formation that rose up from the beach, a formation that now bristled with tripods like a sea urchin, a dozen lenses trained on the darkened windows of Neruda’s hillside home. Nothing was happening there; the poet lay still in his grave. 'He wrote all these love poems, but he was a son of a bitch,' said a reporter from a wire service. She poured Nescafé from a thermos into a styrofoam cup and recited a brief history of the poet’s amorous cruelty. She wondered about Neruda’s first divorce, a hasty arrangement in Mexico, possibly unofficial. Was Neruda a bigamist? ..."
Harpers

February 2009: Pablo Neruda, 2011 November: 100 Love Sonnets.

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