Neruda's epic: 340 poems covering the entire natural and human history of Latin America, from pre-Columbian civilizations through the Spanish conquest to the mid-20th century. "The Heights of Macchu Picchu" is its magnificent centerpiece, a meditation on Inca ruins as layers of human suffering and solidarity that rises to a collective cry across centuries. The most ambitious political poem in Spanish, and the most beautiful.

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.