The Selected Poetry of Vicente Huidobro

Huidobro was certainly imaginative, albeit pompous, and he did associate with some intriguing, but also pompous, French poets. Consequently, his works are stylistically interesting, with then wonderfully-modern imagery of aircraft and global travel. The best are shorter - "Tour Eiffel", "Marino", and "Tout a Coup # 10". However, his famed "Altazor" and most of the other poems are stylistically interesting but ultimately somehow trite. This work is more for the Cubists or Expressionists among us (or as Huidobro styled himself, a "creationist") - art for art's sake.

Huidobro--I discovered him back in the 1970s with a bilingual editon of Poemas árticos. I am currently using the Spanish and French texts--with occasional cross-reference to the English--as an aid in a translation of the poems into Hebrew for the Israeli reading public. As I read these poems in the Spanish and French I glance too at the English and note that many of the English translation choices are imprecise or simply wrong--sometimes reflicting a misjudgment of the grammar of the original languages. More careful editing would have prevented this. HOWEVER, the editors and translators have done a service in bringing his poems to the Anglophone public and for that they deserve our praise--

La importancia de la obra de Vicente Huidobro (CHILE 1893-1948 ) para el surgimiento de los movimientos de vanguardia en América Latina y, en general, en el ámbito de lengua española, ha sido reconocida hace ya suficiente tiempo. Huidobro es -junto a César Vallejo, Oliverio Girondo, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Pablo Neruda, Nicolás Gullén, entre otros- uno de los fundadores de la gran poesía latinoamericana de la primera mitad del siglo. Ecuatorial o Poemas árticos (ambos de 1918) se convirtieron de inmediato en modelos para la renovación de la poesía de su época en América Latina y España. Altazor es una de las contribuciones hispanoamericanas a la poesía del siglo XX. ( Federico Schopf )

Huidobro is an outstanding poet . He gets touching the reader in the most intimate places of the soul with his poetry . To make a poem , said Borges is practise a minor magic .And that is precisely what Huidobro reveals us poem over poem .Please, get close to Huidobro's world and pay attention because you will be surprised by his powerful poetic level.And enjoy this statement of V.H. : "The untruth walks with velvet steps" .