Although Nicanor Parra characterizes his later works as “ecopoetry” (see Ecopoetics), his first volumes belong to an earlier movement, which he termed “antipoetry.” While the title of Parra’s second volume (Poemas y antipoemas) announced Parra’s new concept of the antipoem to the literary world, he merely allowed his works to denote the term’s significance and never offered a concrete definition of an antipoem.
He has, however, suggested what antipoetry is not: it is not poetry typical of Parra’s literary predecessors, nor is it lyric, nor, particularly, is it figurative poetry. As its name implies, Parra’s antipoetry is a reaction to poetic conventions that he perceived were fraudulent and estranged readers from what is real.
Thus in Poemas y antipoemas, Parra roots his poetry in a sensory realism defined by pragmatic and sometimes gross detail. Among the poems of that early volume, Recuerdos de juventud (Memories of Youth) exemplifies both Parra’s characteristic poetic style and his concept of the antipoem.
The speaker of Recuerdos de juventud is stalled in his own reality, caught in the quicksand of his life. His attempts at forward movement are thwarted. The first line of the poem, describing his movement as “yo iba de un lado a otro” (I kept going back and forth), establishes its tone as one of frustration and subtle resentment.
The poem’s description of movement, however, does not simply suggest the passage of time, which might be implied by the title, or any other sort of material advancement. Instead, Recuerdos de juventud takes as its subject a poet’s early attempts at communication and finds both his vocabulary and his connection to other people fragmented. He is provoked to “una tempestad de frases incoherentes” (a storm of incoherent sentences) as well as “unos movimientos agotadores de caderas” (certain exhausting pelvic motions)—the latter suggestive of the graphic, physical detail typical of Parra’s imagery.
Though the speaker has retired to cemeteries to write, he continues to chase the same idea, back and forth, repeating again the image of a kind of circular movement with no forward development or true progress.
Ultimately, despite the speaker’s attempts at contact and communication, his spectators, oblivious to his presence, “leían el periódico / O desaparecían detrás de un taxi” (went on reading the paper / Or disappeared behind a taxi). The speaker is left with nowhere to go and nothing to do.
In a bizarre conjoining of images (of a concrete image with one less tangible), the speaker thinks of the “trozo de cebolla visto durante la cena” (the slice of onion I’d seen during dinner), then immediately thinks of “el abismo que nos separa de los otros abismos” (the abyss that separates us from the other abysses).
Ultimately, the poet is unable to bridge the gulf between himself and his audience with his poetry—but his image of the real, mundane object, the onion, comes across clearly.
Bibliography
Parra, Nicanor. Poems and Antipoems. Edited by Miller Williams, translated by Fernando Alegría et al. New York: New Directions, 1967.
Categories: British Literature, Chilean Literature, Literature, World Literature