Winétt de Rokha

Winétt de Rokha was the mid-career pen name of the Chilean poet and writer Luisa Victoria Anabalón Sanderson (July 7, 1892 – August 7, 1951). Born to an upper-middle class Catholic family in Santiago, she published two books by her early twenties under another pseudonym, Juana Inés de la Cruz (the name of the seventeenth century Mexican poet and nun). In 1916, she met and eloped with the poet Pablo de Rokha (who was born Carlos Diaz Loyola). Together they invented her ''nom de plume''. The De Rokha marriage produced nine children, seven of whom survived infancy. The De Rokha family, though touched several times by tragedy, became a famously accomplished Chilean clan.

From the late 1920s through the late 1940s, Winétt de Rokha published four collections of poetry upon which her literary reputation today largely rests: ''Formas del Sueño'' (1927), ''Cantoral'' (1936), ''Oniromancia'' (1943), and ''El Valle Pierde Su Atmósfera'' (1949). Provided by Wikipedia