This book is the only major collection of the great Chilean writer Vicente Huidobro's poetry to appear in English. Drawn from his works published from 1917 to 1948 and presented bilingually, the translations are principally by David Guss supplemented with renderings by Stephen Fredman, Carlos Hagen, W. S. Merwi, . Geoffrey O'Brien, David Ossman, Michael Palmer, Jerome Rothenberg, Eliot Weinberger, and Geoffrey Young. Huidobro's masterpiece Alrazor appears almost entire.

Huidobro (1893-1948) left Santiago for Paris in 1916. There he co-founded the influential Cubist magazine Nord-Su with Guillaume Apollinaire and Pierre Reverdy. He then launched his own poetic movement, Creationism, and wrote as well for a score of avant-garde journals. Author of over forty books-plays. political tracts, novels, manifestos, poetry-he worked with Edgard Varése, Hans Arp, Robert Delauney, Jorge Luis Borges, and other important writers.

Besides his translations, editor Guss has provided a biographical essay, "Poetry ls a Heavenly Crime, " a lucid and helpful introductory overview of Huidobro and his work.