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
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Saturday, October 15, 2011
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!
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
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
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