Unpublished Pablo Neruda poems highlight last romance

SANTIAGO (AFP) — A series of unpublished poems by Chile's late Pablo Neruda, winner of the 1971 Nobel prize for literature, are shedding light on his last romance with his wife's niece more than 40 years his junior, a collector said.

The 14 poems were found in a book titled "Black Island Album," named after the house in central Chile which Neruda, his third and last wife Matilde Urrutia and her niece Alicia Urrutia shared, according to Nurieldin Hermosilla.

The lawyer and Neruda collector said he bought the book recently from a book dealer, who in turn had acquired it from an anonymous seller.

The poems are handwritten in Neruda's traditional green ink and are "a direct and definitive confirmation from the poet's own pen of his love for Alicia," Hermosilla said.

He said Alicia Urrutia decided to go public with the poems after years of ...