From southern Chile to Northern California, where Cannon Thomas’s cognitive guidance and inspiration have helped empower me to have all that I hold essential in my heart breathe fully. Without that help, I highly doubt this book would have ever been finished. In San Francisco’s Mission district, thanks to Todd Brown and the Red Poppy Art House for the dynamic buttress. In Marin, Alexandra Giardino, champion and translator of Matilde Urrutia, has been such a champion supporter of all my work, and a champion of a friend. In Oakland, the novelist Carolina de Robertis and her beautiful heart provided strong, gemlike gleams to some sections of the text as well as thoughtful overarching insight and guidance. Raised in Oakland, Zafra Miriam was named for the sugarcane harvest in Cuba. When this manuscript was a wild field, she helped cut away the excess, creating the sweet. Stephanie Gorton Murphy, a talented wordsmith, also provided crucial help through a thorough, transformative edit. Carl Fischer and Teresa Delfin, both of whom I met in Palo Alto before they earned their PhDs, provided astute insight into linguistics and literature.
Moving south to Santa Barbara, where Aly Metcalfe introduced me to Mary Heebner (who pairs her paintings with Neruda’s poetry in sublime artist’s books) and her husband, the photographer Macduff Everton (whose breathtaking picture of Isla Negra is in this book). This joyous connection and our conversations of reverence for our mutual friend Alastair Reid, of Pablo, of traveling through Latin America, have filled me with beauty.
Out East, my thanks to the amazingly creative Ram Devenini’s constant encouragement and insight, and the AE Venture Foundation, which provided me with a generous grant to support the completion of this work. Leslie Stainton for her early encouragement, her ability to animate Lorca and Spain in her beautiful biography Lorca: A Dream of Life, and the insightful answers about those subjects she kept affording me. Unas gracias al poeta y profe Martín Espada. Keila Hand, obrigado, warmest heart from the depths of Brazil’s rain forests, who set forth to help sustain the forests of the world, who with her friendship helped sustain me through the completion of this book. Jonathan Denbo has always had my back and helped me keep my head up. Pedro Billig, camino sage, buena onda shepherd; and Dan Long too, their long unwavering run of respaldo and friendship since I met them in the fourth grade.
Washington: Shortly after I arrived, I was surprised by an email from Marie Arana, a golden-hearted literary powerhouse whose books I’ve adored. She wanted to use clips from my documentary as part of a Kennedy Center event on the “Tres Pablos”—Picasso, Neruda, and Pau Cassal. Ever since, her fervent support and guidance have continued to be crucial. John Dinges, who recently was awarded the Chilean government’s highest honor to foreigners for his journalistic work on the atrocities during the Pinochet regime, has given me hours of his time in various D.C. bars helping me wrap my head around all that history, most especially the phenomenon of the assassination presumptions. My thanks to the writer Roberto Brodsky, currently Chile’s cultural attaché, for his perspective and the doors he has opened. Renata Gorzynska was engaging in her help around Czeslaw Milosz’s interactions with Neruda and other leftists. At the Library of Congress—truly a world treasure—many have been incredibly helpful; above all, those in the Hispanic Division under the leadership of the amazing Georgette Dorn. Not only did they provide great assistance, but they made me feel so at home in their reading room. An additional thank-you to Cheryl Fox, head of the Manuscript Division. I’d also like to thank the Textual Records Division of the National Archives, in particular David Langbart.
As I finished the book in Washington, three friendships in particular have meant so much to me: Anna Deeny Morales, Gwen Kirkpatrick, and Vivaldo Santos. Each holds a beautiful mix of character and brilliance. All three are professors at Georgetown University, and I appreciate their intellectual contribution to this work. However, it is their emotional contribution to my well-being that has been so vital.
Quickly then, to across the pond: A flurry of excitement came over me when I first found Dr. John R. G. Turner’s letter in Neruda’s archives, announcing they wanted to name a butterfly after him. That joy has sustained: in between Dr. Turner’s long stints researching winged insects “in the wilds of Scotland,” we’ve begun our own correspondence, through the course of which in addition to sharing with me Neruda’s reply to his letter we’ve discussed a kaleidoscope of intriguing thoughts prompted by poetry and butterflies. Dr. Turner is not only an essential evolutionary biologist, but an award-winning translator of Verlaine. I appreciate him greatly.
In the home stretch, thanks to the journalist Mike Ruby for his benevolence in helping this manuscript find a home. He got it into the hands of Amy and Peter Bernstein, agents who time and time again have proven their warmth, and intelligence, and dedication to this project. I could not be more grateful for their trust. With thanks to Dan Halpern at Ecco, a publisher I’ve always considered to be the City Lights of New York, for the enthusiasm he’s displayed for the project. I could not have imagined a better outcome. At Ecco, among many, my sincere thanks to Bridget Read for enabling this book to reach its finest form, to Gabriella Doob for bringing it all together, to Nancy Tan for her astonishing copyedit, to Alison Law, who similarly blew me away with her proofread, to David Palmer and
