Few writers are as integrally bound to a place as Pablo Neruda was to the landscape of Isla Negra on Chile’s coast. From his arrival there in the late 1930s to his death in 1973, Neruda captured Isla Negra in images fundamental to an understanding of his work. It was, according to Martin Espada, at Isla Negra where Neruda "in the company of his muse, walked alongside the source of his most lyrical inspiration, the sea...and discovered a new way of seeing, as the ocean became a living metap...