venture of the infinite man

Galleys available upon request Coordinate efforts (events and reviews) with Copper Canyon, who is publishing a new Neruda book simultaneously. National Print Campaign: General interest: Bomb, LA Times, NYTBR, Harper's, Bookforum, Chicago Sun Times, Chicago Tribune, SF Chronicle, Miami Herald, New Yorker among others Trade publications: PW, Library Journal, and Booklist Latin America, world lit & translation interest: Complete Review, Context Magazine, Two Lines, Three Percent, Translation Review, World Literature Today, Latin American Voices, Latin American Review of Books, Latino Magazine, Palabra Magazine, Review: Literature & Art of the Americas, The Americas, Literature in Translation, Reading in Translation, Levure Littéraire, Sakura Review Online (Blog) Campaign: Pursue reviews in: Full Stop Mag, Guernica, Little Star, Molossus, Quarterly Conversation, Words Without Borders Excerpts in: Poetry Magazine, Paris Review, Two Lines Social Media Campaign: Promotion via City Lights social media: City Lights Blog, CL Facebook (32K likes), CL Twitter (119K followers), Goodreads (5000 friends), CL Instagram (13.5K followers). Frequent tweets and Facebook posts related to Pablo Neruda's life. Endorsements: Peter Wilson, Rene de Costa, Katherine Silver, Stephen Kessler, Robert Hass, Stephen Mitchell, Ariel Dorfman

Neruda's long-overlooked third book of poetry, critical in his poetic evolution, now translated into English for the very first time!

Neruda's long-overlooked third book of poetry, critical in his poetic evolution, now translated into English for the very first time!

Over twenty books by Pablo Neruda, the legendary Chilean poet and Nobel Laureate, have been translated into English, a testament to his enormous appeal. Yet, the work Neruda pointed to as "one of the most important books of my poetry," has been woefully neglected and remains virtually unknown.

venture of the infinite man was Neruda's third book, published in 1926, two years after his widely celebrated and still much beloved Twenty Love Poems. In a stark stylistic departure from the love poems, Neruda discarded rhyme, meter, punctuation and capitalization in an attempt to better capture the voice of the subconscious. In an epic poem comprised of fifteen cantos spread over 44 un-numbered pages, the Infinite Man sets forth on a virtual sleepwalk through time and space, on a quest to atone for his past and to rediscover himself. Neruda's readers were not prepared for this experiment, and venture did not garner the reception Neruda had hoped for. Indeed, decades after its publication, he lamented that it remained "the least read and least studied of all my work."

venture is a strikingly clear example of a poet's creative and intellectual development, bridging the aching, plain lyricism of Love Poems, and the unique hermeticism of Neruda's next book, the landmark Residence on Earth. Neruda considered venture essential to his evolution: "Within its smallness and minimal expression, more than most of my works, it claimed, it secured, the path that I had to follow." Its long-overdue translation into English is cause for celebration!

"Experimental, obscure, timeless, essential, venture of the infinite man, published two years after his famous Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, set Pablo Neruda on his course toward becoming the greatest poet in the history of the Spanish language. Its publication in English is a historic event, above all today, above all in this moment, above all, now."—Raúl Zurita

"In his early twenties and after the enormous success of Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, Neruda surprised everyone by changing aesthetic gears...