"It can take me months to write a poem! I correct it endlessly," Octavio Paz once confessed to Argentine photographer Sara Facio, when she was taking his portrait for a book about writers. That was in 1970, and he was marveling to Facio about the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, during a conversation at Cambridge University in England. Paz found it incredible that Neruda had written a poem dedicated to the Chilean singer-songwriter Violeta Parra during the short trip from IsIa Negra to Valparaiso. And Neruda's work would go straight to the printer without major corrections.
Pablo Neruda was ten years older than Octavio Paz and one of his intellectual mentors. Neruda had invited the Mexican poet ...