One of Pablo Neruda's own favorites among his books, Extravagaria marks an important stage in the progress of his poetry. It was written at the point in his life when he had returned to Chile after many wanderings and moved to Isla Negra on the Pacific coast. These writings celebrate this coming to rest, this rediscovery of the sea and the land, for in Extravagaria Neruda evolved a lyric poetry that is decidedly more personal than his earlier work. Written in what he called his "autumnal" period, the sixty-eight poems range from the wistful to the exultant, combining psalm and speculation, meditation and humorous aside.

Pablo Neruda (1904-73), one of the renowned poets of the twentieth century, was born in Farral, Chile. He shared the World Peace Prize with Paul Robeson and Pablo Picasso in 1950, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971.