Extravagaria marks an important stage in Neruda's progress as a poet. The book was written just after he had returned to Chile after many wanderings and moved to his beloved Isla Negra
on the Pacific coast. These sixty-eight poems thus denote a resting point, a rediscovery of sea and land, and an "autumnal period" (as the poet himself called it). In this book, Neruda
developed a lyric poetry decidedly more personal than his earlier work.