The Selected Poetry of Vicente Huidobro is the first major collection of the great Chilean writer’s work to appear in English. Throughout Latin America and Europe, Huidobro is considered one of the most significant poets of our century and is recognized as one of the seminal figures in modern Spanish-language poetry. Octavio Paz wrote of him: “He is the invisible oxygen of our poetry.” His masterpiece, the epic Altazor (which appears almost entire in this bilingual edition) has been called “one of the most important works of Latin America literature of all time.” Huidobro (1893-1948) left Santiago in his early twenties, arriving in Paris in 1916 where he co-founded the influential Cubist magazine Nord-Sud with Guillaume Apollinaire and Pierre Reverdy. Soon after, he launched his own poetic movement known as Creationism and wrote, as well, for a score of other avant-garde journals. Author of over forty books—plays, political tracts, novels, manifestos, journalism, and poetry—Huidobro worked with Edgard Varèse, Hans Arp, Juan Gris, Robert Delaunay, Jorge Luis Borges, and other important artists of his time. The editor of the present collection, David M. Guss, is a poet and translator who has lived and worked in various parts of South America. His most recent work is a translation of Marc de Civrieux’s Watunna: An Orinoco Creation Cycle (North Point Press). The translations from both Spanish and French have been made by a group of poets known for their outstanding work as translators: Stephen Fredman, Carlos Hagen, W. S. Merwin, Geoffrey O’Brien, David Ossman, Michael Palmer, Jerome Rothenberg, Eliot Weinberger, and Geoffrey Young. In addition to doing the major portion of the translation, editor Guss has provided a critical/biographical essay, “Poetry Is a Heavenly Crime,” to introduce Vicente Huidobro to a wider North American audience.
