Pablo Neruda, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, finished writing The Captain's Verses in 1952 while in exile on the island of Capri-the paradisal setting for the blockbuster film Il Postino (The Postman). Surrounded by sea, sun, and Capri's natural splendors, Neruda addressed these poems to his lover Matilde Urrutia before they were married, but didn't publish them publicly until 1963. This complete, bilingual collection has become a classic for love-struck readers around the world-passionately sensuous, and exploding with all the erotic energy of a new love.

Pablo Neruda was born in 1904 in the town of Parral in Chile. He received numerous prestigious awards for his work, including the International Peace Prize in 1950, the Lenin Peace Prize and the Stalin Peace Prize in 1953. In 1971, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Two years later he died of leukemia in Santiago, Chile.