Description
Poetry. Branded a "poète maudit" for the cryptic circumstances surrounding his life and death, Omar Cáceres once tried to destroy all copies of his one and only book. The myth around him survived thanks to the inclusion of fifteen poems from DEFENSE OF THE IDOL in the groundbreaking anthology Antología de poesía chilena nueva from 1935. Presented here for the first time in English translation, along with the sole foreword Vicente Huidobro ever wrote for a poet, the poems of Cáceres possess a ghostly, metaphysical energy combined with modern-age imagery: bows pulsate, moons hurtle, rains sing, trees drag their shadows in drunk stupors, winds break the sky open. But the interior life of the poet assumes dominance, interrogated through anguished, turbulent dreamscapes of language.
Author Bio
Omar Cáceres (1904-1943) was a cult poet in the Chilean avant-garde. He published one book of poetry, Defense of the Idol (1934), with an introduction by Vicente Huidobro, of which only two copies survived after Cáceres tried to burn the entire print run upon publication due to the edition's numerous typos. He had ties with the Communist Party, and according to poet Jorge Teillier, played the violin in an orchestra of the blind. He was murdered by unknown assailants in 1943.
Author City: Cauquenes CHL
Mónica de la Torre's books include THE HAPPY END / ALL WELCOME (Ugly Duckling Presse) and PUBLIC DOMAIN (Roof Books). A native of Mexico City, she has translated Latin American poets and co-edited several multilingual anthologies, most notably Reversible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry (Copper Canyon). Her work has been published in magazines such as Aufgabe, Convolution, frieze, and The New Yorker, as well as anthologies and exhibit catalogs including Xul Solar and Jorge Luis Borges: The Art of Friendship, Corrected Slogans (Triple Canopy), and The Animated Reader (The New Museum). She was the recipient of a Lannan Foundation residency in 2014. She teaches in the creative writing MFA program at Columbia University and is BOMB Magazine's senior editor.
Author City: BROOKLYN, NY USA