Another Nicanor fan

Thanks to Ottawa poet, bibliophile and bon vivant Michael Dennis for choosing Nicanor Parra as the first of 13 books he would take to Neptune. Great blog entry at:

13poetrybooksonneptune.wordpress.com

New Nicanor Parra collection!

I've just had word that the second volume of Nicanor's Obras Completas is at press in Chile, and will be on sale as of October 28.

This new volume, Obras Completas II, will pick up where Obras Completas I: Obras completas & algo + (1935 - 1972) left off, and bring us up to 2006, including the visual works.

Can't wait! More on it as soon as I manage to get my hands on a copy!

97 Lines for Nicanor &

Something (finally) for Nicanor's 97th, last month:

97 Lines
For Nicanor Parra on the occasion of his 97th birthday

Cant walk
I am stone
The stone alone
This tossed aside by god
Run over, shard of day
Thin and nameless
A mere dustbunny of memory
Become priest confessor
In this oubliette, this capillary
Of group ignorance.
*
Some one confessed to me
Distracted, punch-drunk
Short by a hair, crumpled
And unheeding of the shit that happens to, say, you.
Zero, right
The shape of either a man’s knee or the moon
That’s an old man’s knee, a shrink’s moon
I’ve had the same eyes for these many hard years
They’re gonna be my sugar-plum some night, baby
Used, good for spotting movement, like a dog’s.
**
Hey rube,
Before you enter the tent
Preferably through an entrance
Linger a decade, consider the ant
Does it toil, or spin? What antly ambitions. What eight-footed lusts
Echo through time to bring down an emperor
Emperors, yeah, the modern goat
Who carries his own desert within…

Yep, no one like me
Scared painless
***
Chickie and Bif Daddy
Are so pissed their tongues flap
At me singing myself.
Adorable fine artist
Born 1951
From crazy folk, noisy
Until I clammed up
Held my voice prisoner in my beard
Shot the fucking parrot of self
Guys and dolls.
****
Unsure quantum of fleshiness,
One snowy mother
Upright in a chair.
Dreaming a meal, (eating a dream?)
absent
When the hell is lunch (or lunch is hell?)
A red chair is in love with me
Unable to pose as a woman
Waiting a lifetime
False promise! No kids, never.
*****
I ain’t even started
Lock-jawed, powered down
In a garden full of priests
The forest in my safe deposit box
It ain’t talking, either
One ticket to the realm
Better make it an aller-retour
I’ll come back as a dog
Barking like a paladin
To improve this century!
******
Okey-dokey with me
This plague of Santiagan monkeys
It’s merely Eugenio, whom I’d beleive
lads
Whether I wanted to or not
But for the passage of time
But for the spiritual fortune squandered on mere spirit
Fading backwards
In the city in which he lives or does not
& all his young
*******
So here’s Paco Empieza, a character,
diversion
So many years
As Santiago, a city
Til the earth turned sideways
& dumped him into the story as man
Not the best ending,
First to admit, but
Hold your burros, aburridos
This cat has been fucked by the years.
********
Up late again
Naked under some clothes
I have a season I need to show the doctor.

Too much time alone
Dries your eyes
Better than night, sleep
& what may lay below
I’m not translating that
Flat out
Think of me what you will.
*********
Tensed verb
Sick doctor
Got here by fasting
solo
I’m an old loaf
invisible
In the back of the fridge.

Jim

A Miscellany for Nicanor on Sept 11 2011

Couple of things for Nicanor:

Small Rocket Ship Spinning Atoms Logo

They fed neutrinos into our sun
Earth simply disappeared
Stones thrown from the moon
Jellyfish riding our spines
Theocracy
Time-travelling Russians attract the baldies
Impersonators infiltrate
Nuclear war
Asteroid impact
Machine intelligence




-------------

After Gasta Claus


The revolution never came north
They went south instead
And they went further south
Then fell off the planet
With all of us intact
But little to breath
Less to eat
And there we float just off to the left
Off the planet
Watching the earth
Like a tv you want to punch
Cause the show sucks
And there’s nothing
Else on
There are no stars that you want to follow,
And how do we get back
How do we get back
By words by deeds
Or just by wishing
The hands out trying
We are trying to pull ourselves back to the earth
By grasping at the very lack of molecules
Into which we fell
And if we get there.
We‘ll crawl up from
The south
Like monsters
We’ll come north
From the south
Like monsters
And norther
From souther
And maybe you’ll see us

We look a little hungry
Space don’t got much
to eat


-----------------

To Nibbles, my dog

To Nibbles, my dog-child
Who knew nothing at all, your eyes said
As much as tobacco, dumb enough, your glance.
But you had big shoulders to get up over things
And when you left me, you had no spine.
Look at other dogs, all worked up, orphanistic, save them!
But you just improvised, rotting old Nibbles
As you whirled around in your scared fits
Which brought my house down in fear
Despite all the drives to the ambulance, we didn’t
Because it was filled up with the naked dead
And you had bitten the child in me
While we wrestled up in the air, landing on some poor prostitute
But you were my best friend.
Your dog family didn’t get it
They didn’t want to get it,
And the number of times you sold me,
Nibbles, comrade!
You made a mystery of me
The way I ran into the street that day
Sure you were happy, sure you were happy,
Happy dog.


From “A Niebla, mi perro” by Rafael Alberti

----------------------------

I bought a hat in Spain


Whose against poetry
But a humid businessman named Artaud?
A priest lacking one thing?
A general who doubts the miasma?
A vagabond who pisses on everything
Including the very visage of death?
Someone who talks bad to you?
A dancer on the precipice
of a narcissist, ya gotta love that!
Bloody joker, but
Deliberately miserable?
Howabout a poet who lives in a missile silo,
An alchemist of these times?
A plastic bagged revolutionary,
Bringing home the tasty little bourgeoisies?
A nut?
Some god, the innocent!
Or maybe some petty little alderman from a shipping town?
Underline your answer!

What is it that poetry has against itself:
Temporal tea?
A rock sliced by snow?
Maybe a wallet full of human poop?
God thinks so.
A spy telling truth?
A newsflash from your face
Direct to a writer of your own?
Hold your horses –
Some cheap pass at young poets?
Artaud eating a sausage?
Then flying apart because
Artaud is full of gas?
Some thin artery about to explode?

Take note of the Cross
Which many consider correct.

Of “Test” by Nicanor Parra in de Obra gruesa (1969, Chile)

------------------------


Indie Act

Long unhinged
From the machinations
Of the catholics
I announce to you right now, today:
I have my own faith.
It is a small, new country
That ends just past my nose.

This is one of the perks
Of being 57, the right
To flee any church so eager
To put me underground.

I’m not nuts about it, sure,
Not like if a flower gave me a nice smell
When it touched my body.

Sort of delirious, enough
To make a butterfly convulse
When it appears crowned
With an apparatus
That resembles my soul.

May the Fifth International forgive me.

Here, in Toronto, this whatever
Of November, current year,

Wildly aware of what needs doing!


From “Acta de Independencia” by Nicanor Parra, in de Obra gruesa (Santiago, 1969)

-----------------------

Due to other commitments, my next post to the blog will be September 22.

If anybody's reading this, give me a shout, tell me what you think. Even better, ask me a question about Nicanor! I'll try and answer it!

con un abrazo

Jim

Parresources!

The essential site for the scoop on Nicanor Parra:

www.nicanorparra.uchile.cl

and the site for the amazing 90 minute documentary, Retrato de un Antipoeta/Portrait of an Antipoet:

www.inacap.cl/tportalvp/?t=143

AND THE BEST DAMN NEWS I HAVE HEARD SINCE I SAW BACK OFF, ASSASSIN! ON THE LEAKED LONGLIST FOR THE 2010 GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARD FOR POETRY:

VOLUME 2 OF THE COLLECTED WORKS OF NICANOR PARRA HAS JUST BEEN RELEASED IN SPAIN. It is reputed to include a significant quantity of previously unpublished material since 2006! As soon as I know more, I'll let you know...

The Nicanoriad - Part The First

So in June 2010 I almost made it to visit with my favorite living poet. Sandbagged by an ear infection. Here's a piece I did prior to the brief trip to Santiago. More parts to come!

I am going to see Parra because together we are 154 years old. Because I cant remember the call number of Poems and Antipoems, it was something like PQ something something something something. Because there in the basement of basements of Douglas Library, Queen’s, where it is always 1973, I can remember it stuck its foot out and caught me in its arms, it ruffled my hair, said laugh when you think its funny. No, I am going to see Parra because after 11 years Stuart Ross and I sat there and joked wouldn’t it be neat to hand a copy of Back Off, Assassin to Parra, and because I laughed cause that was funny. Because I went home to make Jo-Anne laugh and told her Stu’s and my little chiste, and because she said why not. And I ruffled my hair and said well maybe. No, I am going to see Parra because there is a debt that must be paid. Because all I plan to do is say thanks. And he will say por que? Because I will articulate something like you gave me an example I need not follow, because you showed me there is no one way to write, because you pushed me down an alley in which the words have ruffled my hair. I am going to see Parra because I never told Samuel Beckett I loved him. Because I never made that trip to see William Burroughs. Because Pound was gone before the thought occurred to me. I am going to see Parra because it is only distance, and weather, and time. I’d like it if he would just ruffle my hair, say gee, Jim, don’t be scared. It’s just me.

hasta siempre

Jim

Couple of new ones!

As a celebration of Nicanor's 97th birthday, a few new poems (which, interestingly, come to 97 lines!):

From the Secret Diary of Parliament

For some time I had been seeing weird shit
My stomach felt like something walking on it
Several questions blocked the door when I tried to leave.
They would let me out sometimes at night
As long as I did not wear a shirt
So I would blend in with the moon.
Walking, I would think of Attila
And politics.
Days poetry took up all the space
Which made me too self-conscious
So I was glad to blend in with the moon.
Somewhere between two tables in a bar
A sound whimpered it was an emergency
But that was the very moment a speech
Beat another speech to death with a stick.
Surely you heard about that?
Thus precious moments were lost
While my party got a tattoo
It called doubt
On its tiny little religious doubt.
You can take precautions, sure,
But reason never sails a ship straight
Not even when plants keep their heads down
In a tall, tall world.
Of course I got mugged for my worst presentiments
The telephones stopped ringing
And littered the ground I walked on.
My trembling hand wrote a wrong number
Only good when I slept.
Uncertainty placed second at the polls,
Waiting for a foreign sound
To stab it with a pencil.
Meanwhile, down the arroyo,
The dentists of Belsen
Fell from the sky, hoping their passports
Could be renewed, black
As the back of your eye.
I offered my tongue up as a roast
For the sake of some conversation
I was so fucking tired
Of batteries. Electricity
Had to make a comeback
I need to share my worry about questions.
Erotic self-censure failed me
And I ended up hungry.

Bad jokes consume time a landlady just doesn’t have.
Stupid talk beneath a convulsing sky
Is not the Soul-Destroyer
It is just stupid talk beneath the convulsing sky.
I compliment you
On my imprisonment -
Usually I’d hate it,
But since tomorrow
I’ll forget the church again, anyway,
Thanks.


After La Trampa by Nicanor Parra


-------------

Dos

By February 5, 1927
I caught myself working
My way north with an Albanian.
Just following orders
North American style
Stealing the silver
For those who’d come after!
It was a pissy situation
Stretched across a bed
Drunk blind or both
And then I hear my name
From up above
So I freeze, see,
Blood cowers in my vein
While it got so hot
My pants expanded
I thought it was all over
So may as well stop lying
Stop making people stupid
Like I was king
My eyes flopped out on the sidewalk
So surprised they started frying
Desperate I did pushups
Made myself a telegram
To myself about getting smarter
There was a stone in my eye
The size of a kid
Forgot I was a man
Who did things right.

After Sermones y Predicas del Cristo de Elqui, ii, by Nicanor Parra

------------------------

The Space Opera

Nicanor appears in the southern sky, growing every second.
A coup happens. A coup unhappens.
Deep beneath the Atacama desert, lair of the rebels.
North America occupies 90% of the sky above Santiago.
The indigenous people are aliens.
The only way out of Moneda Palace is suicide.
Every night, a gun rises in the east, sets in the west.
A small fishing boat rescues flop-eared Jesus, drunk to the gills.
Jesus is a mercenary with a dark, dark past.
Nicanor points to the eventual heat death of the universe.

Gumby in uniform, clay gun at the ready.
Eugenio flees into old age.
Chile smells itself.
Nicanor sing softly in the nearest café.


All work copyright (c) 2011 by Jim Smith

Why Nicanor Parra? Why today?

Today is the great Chilean antipoet's 97th birthday. I expect he is celebrating it by the ocean in Las Cruces. I missed a chance to visit him last year, but hope to visit this coming spring.

This blog is a simple act of admiration & an attempt to explore the significance of Nicanor Parra through unconventional, creative and non-academic means. I'll post sections of my work here, & invite others to do so as well.

I discovered Nicanor's work in 1972 in the sub-sub-sub-basement of Douglas Library, when I returned to Queen's University in Kingston. I think I found the 1960 New Directions Poems and Antipoems (bibliographic memory fades), and stood there transfixed, leaning against the metal shelving, reading poems the likes of which I had never seen - direct, iconoclastic, mocking forms and traditional poetic sensibilities. I think I found my way to his work by way of Pound, who led me to Cardenal, who lead me to Parra.

I have read everything I could get my hands on of his ever since. Eventually I learned enough rudimentary Spanish to try my hand at anti-translating some of his work (and others like Lihn and Vallejo). I called those pieces translations naif, and some of them appeared in my 1986 book Convincing Americans, which the amazing poet and dedicated small press publisher (then, as now) Stuart Ross brought out under his Proper Tales Press imprint.

I continue to do these odd beasts today - they are not translations in any traditional sense, most often they wander quickly away from the content of Nicanor's source work - into other topics, other diction, other lineation. I went through a stage of calling them mis-translations, at this moment I'm not calling them anything in particular.

I have expanded my ambition this last year. I'm currently working my way through Nicanor's 1977 Sermones y Predicas del Cristo de Elqui. It is a truly thrilling voyage. The result, whatever that will be, will form the backbone of a new book which I trust will appear next year, whose working title is Happy Birthday Nicanor Parra!

I'm also just a total unrepentant fan. I love his visual artefactos, sent him a copy of my last book, Back Off, Assassin! New and Selected Poems (Mansfield Press, 2009), and through a Facebook query about his safety following the devastating earthquake in Chile in 2010, connected with a brilliant grandson of his, and have been lucky enough to borrow from the producer/director a rough working sub-titled copy of an amazing Chilean documentary, Retrato de un Antipoeta.

More on some of the above later. In the meantime, I just wanted to put this bog up on Nicanor's 97th & say gracias para todo.

Happy Birthday, Nicanor!