Defense of the Idol

Poetry. Branded a poete maudit for the cryptic circumstances surrounding his life and death, Omar Caceres 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 Antologia de poesia 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 Caceres 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.