Let The Rail Splitter Awake and Other Poems.

NERUDA, Pablo.

$175.00

Item Number: 142345

New York: Masses & Mainstream, Inc, 1950.

First American edition of this collection of early English translations of Neruda’s poetry, including The Heights of Macchu Picchu. Octavo, original wrappers. From the library of Erica Jong, although not marked. Erica Jong remains best known for her 1973 novel Fear of Flying which became famously controversial for its portrayal of female sexuality and figured prominently in the development of second-wave feminism. Written in the first person and narrated by its protagonist, 29-year-old American poet Isadora Wing, Fear of Flying was written in the throes of the Sexual Revolution of the 1970s and encapsulated the movement’s redefinition of female sexuality. In interviews, Jong stated: “At the time I wrote Fear of Flying, there was not a book that said women are romantic, women are intellectual, women are sexual—and brought all those things together… What [Isadora is] looking for is how to be a whole human being, a body and a mind, and that is what women were newly aware they needed in 1973.” The novel remains a feminist classic and has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide. In good condition.

Chilean poet-diplomat Pablo Neruda was first recognized as a poet when he was 13 years old, and wrote in a variety of styles, including surrealist poems, historical epics, political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and passionate love poems such as the ones in his collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924). Widely considered the national poet of Chile, Neruda was awarded the International Peace Prize in 1950 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971.