Rediscovering Gabriela Mistral: a new trove of the poet's papers promises to give researchers fresh insights into Latin America's first recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

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Rediscovering Gabriela Mistral: a new trove of the poet's papers promises to give researchers fresh insights into Latin America's first recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

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After remaining stashed away in the United States for half a century, newly uncovered documents of the poet Gabriela Mistral--120 boxes of them--have now reached their final destination in Chile, where they will one day be made available to readers. Her correspondence with such intellectuals and political figures as Jacques Maritain, Thomas Mama, Ezra Pound, Victoria Ocampo, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jose Vasconcelos, Alfonso Reyes, Aldous Huxley, Eduardo Fret Montalva, and Pablo Neruda is nearly as endless as the list of unpublished poems, personal notebooks, and photographs that are only now beginning to come to light.

My little box / from Olinala / is rosewood / and jacaranda / When suddenly I / open it, it exudes / a Queen-of-Sheba / fragrance /

She was born Lucila de Maria del Perpetuo Socorro Oodoy Alcayaga in 1889. Her father, a professor who had a knack for making up folk songs, left home and kept on going, after having written her lovely infant lullabies that left their mark. The daughter would later write popular p...

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