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FINAL DRAFT Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), whose real name is Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, was born on July 12, 1904, in the town of Parral in Chile. His father was a railway employee and his mother, who died shortly after his birth, a teacher. Some years later his father, who had then moved to the town of Temuco, remarried doña Trinidad Candia Malverde. The poet spent his childhood and youth in Temuco, where he also got to know Gabriela Mistral, head of the girls' secondary school, who took a liking to him, who won the Nobel Price years before Neruda. The pen name of Pablo Neruda was adopted in memory of the Czechoslovak poet Jan Neruda (1834-1891). Some of the poems Neruda wrote at that time are to be found in his first published book: Crepu