Which Chilean poet wrote 'Canto General'?

Pablo Neruda wrote the Chilean poetry collection *Canto General*.

First published in Mexico in 1950, *Canto General* is Neruda’s tenth book of poetry and one of his most ambitious works. He began composing it in 1938, imagining a sweeping poetic history of the Americas from the natural world and Indigenous civilizations to conquest, colonialism, political struggle, and modern Latin American identity.

The collection contains 15 sections, 231 poems, and more than 15,000 lines. Its best-known section, “The Heights of Macchu Picchu,” reflects on Inca civilization and the human labor and suffering concealed beneath monumental history. Other sections address conquistadors, liberators, workers, landscapes, and Chile itself.

The first Mexican edition included illustrations by muralists Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Because the book mixes epic history, political poetry, nature writing, and personal testimony, it is sometimes mistaken for a conventional single poem. Neruda, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971, regarded *Canto General* as his most important book.