Nicanor Parra: The Anti-Poet Poet

For those unfamiliar with the work of Nicanor Parra, he may have looked like an overrated gruff old man who kept on reaping accolades from past glories.

Nothing father from the truth.

Although his most famous work were his poems, Nicanor Parra was also an esteemed Teacher and Professor, and a noted Mathematician and Physicist, having left his mark in Academia before turning to Poetry full time.

Although science was his first career, Nicanor Parra already wrote verses and small poems in high school, inspired by the big names on Latin American and World literature, such as Shakespeare, and Ruben Dario.

In fact, it is possible to notice this influence in his first published books; but it was his encounter with Allen Greensberg and the American Beat Movement in the 1950's that marked a defining change in his poetry. From this moment on, Parra’s poetry embraces chaos and his irony turns sardonic, as a refection of the times.

Grapewine Leaves

The firstborn of four siblings, Nicanor was born in a humble but creative and witty family, with tight links to the countryside and folkloric traditions. This family influence, joined to their particular talents, channeled the life of Nicanor and his three siblings (Violeta, Roberto and Eduardo) through the areas of culture and knowledge.

In 1937 Nicanor graduated from the faculty of Pedagogy with a degree in Mathematics and Physics. Two years later, while he’s working as a teacher in high school, he funds ‘The New Magazine’, where he publishes his first short story, ‘Cat on the Road’, which already shows strokes of his famous irreverence.

Also in this year, he publishes his first book of poems, "Songbook Without Name", which wins the Municipal Prize of Poetry and earns him accolades from Nobel Prize winner Gabriela Mistral.

In 1943 he receives a scholarship to study a postgraduate degree in Brown University in Advanced Mechanics. In 1949 he goes to Oxford University to study Cosmology. Upon his return to his homeland, Parra works as Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Universidad de Chile.

According to his pupils, Parra was a fun teacher, who taught Mathematics and Physics with humor, and who spurred their imagination as much as their sense of logic. It’s a mixture that will be a continuous seal in his work: mathematics and poetry, logic and emotion. For Parra, there was no difference between both.

With the publication of his second book of poems, ‘Poems and Antipoems’ in 1954, he installs the concept of anti-poetry, breaking bounds with traditional poetry. At this point, he decides to switch his attention to poetry full time.

"The Long Cueca", Poetry Book, 1958.

His dedication paid off. In 1969 he wins the National Literature Prize.

Unlike most of the poetry at that time, Parra’s poetry speaks to the layman, using common and sometimes vulgar language. And the layman feels identified with it and its message, making it part of himself, because it’s already his own in essence.

Self-Portrait (Free Translation)
From ‘Poems and Antipoems’

Consider, boys
This cancer-gnawed tongue:
I’m a teacher in an obscure high school,
I’ve lost my voice giving classes.
(After all or nothing
I do forty hours a week).
How do you like my slapped face?
Doesn’t it inspire pity to look at me!
And what do you say about this nose
rotten by the lime of the degrading chalk.

In matter of eyes, three meters away
I don’t recognize my own mother.
What happens to me? - Nothing.
I’ve ruined them giving classes:
The bad light, the sun,
The poisonous, miserable moon.
And all for what,
To earn an unforgivable bread
Hard as a bourgeois face
With the taste and smell of blood.
Why have we been born as men
If we’re given the death of animals!

Due to the excess of work, sometimes
I see strange forms in the air,
I hear crazed runs,
Laughter, criminal conversations.
Behold these hands
And these corpse-white cheeks,
These few hairs left,
These black, infernal wrinkles!
However, I was once like you,
Young, full of beautiful ideals
I dreamt of melting copper
And polishing the facets of a diamond:
Here I am today
Behind this uncomfortable desk
Numbed by the singsong
Of the five hundred hours a week.

Parra’s poems thread ideas and sensations from simple words, chosen with precision. His work bears the hallmark of geniality: an apparent simplicity that hides the critical depth of its message.

In 1972, Parra publishes a new set of poetry: the ‘Artifacts’, a box with 242 postcards, each one with a different message: jokes, witticisms, illustrations. Similar to the ready-mades of Marcel Duchamp and the Dada Movement in the 1920's, Parra install his poetic views on objects, alongside images used to capture the public’s attention and often adds to the message conveyed. The most famous of these are his ‘Paper Trays’ (‘Bandejitas de La Reina’, in reference to the area of the city where the poet lived.). The work mixes humor with serious critique, and earns him further acclaim as a vanguard artist.

Although he never won the elusive award, Parra was postulated four times for the Nobel Prize in Literature: 1995, 1997, 2000 and 2011. He did, however, win other important recognitions, such as the Premio Cervantes (2011), the highest award to literature works in the Spanish Language, and the Premio Reina Sofia de Poesia Iberoamericana (2001).

In parallel to his literary work, Nicanor Parra was the counsellor and guide to his sister’s career, the famed folklorist Violeta Parra, a cultural icon in her own right.

The charm of Parra’s work lays on its irreverent but accessible genius. Sometimes brutal, scandalous, earthy, humorous, free, witty, but never dull. Fun was a fundamental trait of Parra’s personality, one which transcended into his classes, his poems, his readings, his artifacts, his conversations with his friends.

"The mistake consisted in believing that the Earth was ours,

when in fact, we are the Earth's"

Nicanor Parra died on January 23^rd of this year, aged 103. A long and accomplished life, worthy to be remembered as inspiration, for those who’ve decided to travel through the arts road, as well as for those who see in his work a reflection of their own lives.

Epitaph (Free Translation)

From ‘Poems and Anti-poems’

Middle-height,

With a neither too thin or thick voice,

Eldest son of an elementary school teacher

And a back room seamstress;

Thin from birth

Although devoted to good meals;

Of thin cheeks

And more than abundant ears;

With a square face

In which the eyes barely open

And a nose of mulatto boxer

Down to the mouth of Aztec idol

- All of these bathed

By a light between ironic and perverse -

Neither too smart nor a blockhead

I was what I was : a mixture

Of vinegar and table oil

A sausage of angel and beast!