• Source: Nicanor Parra

Nicanor Segundo Parra Sandoval (5 September 1914 – 23 January 2018) was a Chilean physicist and poet. He has been considered one of the most influential Spanish-language Chilean poets of the 20th century.
Parra described himself as an "anti-poet" on account of his distaste for poetry's pompous pretences. After his recitations, he would say: "Me retracto de todo lo dicho." ("I take back everything I've said.")




Life



Parra, the son of a schoolteacher, was born in 1914 in San Fabián de Alico, near Chillán, in Chile. He came from the artistically prolific Parra family of performers, musicians, artists, and writers. His sister, Violeta Parra, was a folk singer, as was his brother Roberto Parra Sandoval.
In 1933, he entered the Instituto Pedagógico of the University of Chile, where he qualified as a teacher of mathematics and physics in 1938, one year after the publication of his first book, Cancionero sin Nombre. After teaching in Chilean secondary schools, in 1943 he enrolled in Brown University in the United States to study physics. In 1948, he attended Oxford University to study cosmology. He returned to Chile as a professor at the Universidad de Chile in 1952. Parra served as a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Chile from 1952 to 1991, and was a visiting professor at Louisiana State University, New York University, and Yale University. He read his poetry in England, France, Russia, Mexico, Cuba, and the United States. He published dozens of books.
As a young man, he was promoted by Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda. He came to Mistral's attention when she visited Chillán. The national anthem was played in her honor, as Latin America's first Nobel laureate; at its conclusion, Parra leapt onto the stage and recited a poem he'd written for her the previous night. Mistral, standing for the anthem, remained standing until Parra finished, and later introduced him to important people in Santiago as a poet of future global renown. Subsequently, Neruda arranged for Parra's collection Poemas y Antipoemas to be published in Buenos Aires, in 1954.
Poemas y Antipoemas is a classic of Latin American literature, one of the most influential Spanish poetry collections of the twentieth century. It is cited as an inspiration by American Beat writers such as Allen Ginsberg.

A fictionalized version of Parra appeared in Alejandro Jodorowsky's autobiographical film Endless Poetry (2016).




Death


Parra died on 23 January 2018, at 7:00 am, in La Reina in Santiago, at the age of 103.




Awards


As far I know, only the Mexican poet Mario Santiago has made a lucid reading of his work. We others have only seen a dark meteorite.
Parra was proposed on four occasions for the Nobel Prize in Literature. On 1 December 2011, Parra won the Spanish Ministry of Culture's Cervantes Prize, the most important literary prize in the Spanish-speaking world. On 7 June 2012, he won the Pablo Neruda Ibero-American Poetry Award.




List of works


Cancionero sin nombre (Songbook without a Name), 1937.
Poemas y antipoemas (Poems and Antipoems), 1954; Nascimento, 1956; Cátedra, 2005, ISBN 978-84-376-0777-1
La cueca larga (The Long Cueca), 1958
Versos de salón (Parlor Verses), 1962
Manifiesto (Manifesto), 1963
Canciones rusas (Russian Songs), 1967
Obra gruesa (Thick Works), 1969
Los profesores (The Teachers), 1971
Artefactos (Artifacts), 1972
Sermones y prédicas del Cristo de Elqui (Sermons and Teachings of the Christ of Elquí), 1977
Nuevos sermones y prédicas del Cristo de Elqui (New Sermons and Teachings of the Christ of Elquí), 1979
El anti-Lázaro (The Anti-Lazarus), 1981
Plaza Sésamo (Sesame Street), 1981
Poema y antipoema de Eduardo Frei (Poem and Antipoem of Eduardo Frei), 1982
Cachureos, ecopoemas, guatapiques, últimas prédicas, 1983
Chistes parRa desorientar a la policía/poesía (Jokes to Confuse the Police/Poetry), 1983
Coplas de Navidad (Christmas Couplets), 1983
Poesía política (Political Poetry), 1983
Hojas de Parra (Grape Leaves / Pages of Parra (Spanish pun)), 1985
Nicanor Parra: biografía emotiva (Nicanor Parra: Emotional Biography), Ediciones Rumbos, 1988
Poemas para combatir la calvicie (Poems to Combat Baldness), 1993
Páginas en blanco (White Pages), 2001
Lear, Rey & Mendigo (Lear, King & Beggar), 2004
Obras completas I & algo + (Complete Works I and Something More), 2006
Discursos de Sobremesa (After Dinner Declarations), 2006
Obras Completas II & algo + (Complete Works II and Something More), 2011
Así habló Parra en El Mercurio, entrevistas dadas al diario chileno entre 1968 y 2007 (Thus Spoke Parra in El Mercurio, Interviews Given to the Chilean Newspaper Between 1968 and 2007), 2012
El último apaga de luz (The Last One to Leave Turns Off the Lights), 2017
English translations

Poems and antipoems:. Edited by Miller Williams. Translators: Fernando Alegría and others. New Directions Pub. Corp., 1967
Antipoems, new and selected. New York, N.Y: New Directions. 1985. ISBN 0811209601.
Antipoems: How to Look Better and Feel Great. Translated by Liz Werner. New Directions. 2004. ISBN 978-0-8112-1597-8.
After-Dinner Declarations. Translated by Dave Oliphant. Host. 2009. ISBN 978-0-924047-63-3.




References






External links



Nicanor Parra Official website
Nicanor Parra website at the Universidad de Chile
La Antipoesía de Parra y el lenguaje del artefacto UNESCO
El Proyecto de la Antipoesía de Nicanor Parra
Nicanor Parra en Biblioteca Virtual Cervantes
Nicanor Parra recorded at the Library of Congress for the Hispanic Division’s audio literary archive on Apr. 14, 1970

Kata Kunci Pencarian:

• Chili
• Daftar Wali Kota Lima
• Nicanor Parra
• Parra family
• Parra
• Violeta Parra
• Anti-poetry
• Nicanor
• Claudio Parra
• Coast of Poets
• Toda Violeta Parra: El folklore de Chile Vol. VIII
• Niall Binns