Nicanor Segundo Parra Sandoval (5 September 1914 – 23 January 2018) was a Chilean poet and physicist. He was considered one of the most influential Chilean poets of the Spanish language in the 20th century, often compared with
Pablo Neruda. Parra described himself as an "
anti-poet," due to his distaste for standard poetic pomp and function; after recitations he would exclaim "Me retracto de todo lo dicho" ("I take back everything I said").
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.[2] 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.[3] 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.[4]
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.[5][6]
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.
ISBN0811209601.
Antipoems: How to Look Better and Feel Great. Translator: Liz Werner. New Directions. 2004.
ISBN978-0-8112-1597-8.{{
cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (
link)