Vicente Huidobro (1893-1948) is--along with Nobel laureates Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda and his close contemporary Pablo de Rokha--one of the so-called big four of Chilean poetry. Huidobro is considered to be one of the first Latin American avant-garde poets. Aside from his colorful political and personal life, Huidobro was a bilingual and interdisciplinary writer who made lasting contributions to the culture of international modernism and beyond. He authored over thirty books and influenced vanguard communities across Latin America and Europe. Huidobro's masterpiece is generally regarded to be the 1931 epic poem Altazor, a work intimately connected to Temblor de cielo, also published in Madrid the same year. Huidobro published the French version Tremblement de ciel in Paris in 1932.
