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Home , Latin American poetry

Nicanor Parra and the Chaos of Postmodernity Miguel-Angel Zapata Associate Professor Department of Romance Languages and Literatures

t would be risky to claim that the mode, with a tendency toward verse, work of a Latin American falls and in others we see the complete squarely within a given literary domination of the prose poem. But there movement. Contemporary Latin is also a luminosity that cannot be easily , 2005. Photo by Miguel-Angel Zapata. American is split along identified, and the reason is that the various semantic lines, and tends poem’s interior light multiplies and pues, y que vengan las hembras de la I 1 toward a progressive deterritorialization. acquires different meanings on the page. pusta, las damas de Moravia, las egip- However, criticism of Latin American It cannot be said that the poetry of cias a sueldo de los condenados. poetry tends to fall into the dangerous Mutis is surrealistic or transparent or habit of gratuitous classifications, which that it tends only toward the practice Enough of the feverish and agitated vary according to the terminology of a of the prose poem; we can say, rather, men demanding in shrill voices what particular literary theory or according to that his poetry revitalizes language by is now owed to them! Enough of personal invention. Usually there are means of its sonorous multiplicity. fools! The hour of disputes between some anthologies that try to delimit the Mutis does not struggle to make his the quarrelsome, foreign to the order territory of poetry, categorizing it poems unintelligible (for that would of these places, is over. Now it is the according to the apparent tendencies be the death of him); his poems show, turn of the women, the Egyptian and styles of each group of . in contrast, a coherence and a gentle queens of Bohemia and Hungary, The most important contemporary obscurity. In stanza 3 of his poem the travelers of all roads; from their Latin American poets understand that “Caravansary” we read: goggling eyes, from their high hips, the fundamental aim of their craft is to oblivion will distill its best liquors, write poetry that makes sense and that ¡Alto los enfebrecidos y alterados que its most effective territories. Let us at the same time demonstrates vitality con voces chillonas demandan lo que settle our laws, say our chant and, and a renewal of the language. no se les debe! ¡Alto los necios! once and for all, let us outwit the Terminó la hora de las disputas entre misleading call of the old battle Defying Classification While rijosos, ajenos al orden de estas salas. schemer, our sister and lady standing Revitalizing Language Toca ahora el turno a las mujeres, over our tombs. Silence, then; let the las egipcias reinas de Bohemia y de females of Puzsta come, the dames of One example of this understanding Hungría, las trajinadoras de todos los Moravia, the Egyptian women in the is the work of the Colombian poet caminos; de sus ojos saltones, de sus pay of the criminals. Álvaro Mutis (b. 1923). In his poetry altas caderas, destilará el olvido sus we observe different tendencies, but no mejores alcoholes, sus más eficaces – From “Caravansary” (1981) single one takes precedence. In some of territorios. Afinquemos nuestras leyes, Translation by RoseMary McGee his poems we see a hermetic poetry digamos nuestro canto y, por última and Cristobal Gnecco (a poetry that is difficult to read and vez, engañemos la especiosa llamada understand, such as that of Góngora de la vieja urdidora de batallas, Other examples of this simultaneity and Quevedo, two of the most rigorous nuestra hermana y señora erguida ya and revitalization of poetic language are Spanish poets of all times), a surrealistic delante de nuestra tumba. Silencio, within the poetry of Carlos Germán

4 HOFSTRAHORIZONS Belli (b. 1927, Perú) and Oscar Hahn (b. 1938, Chile). Their poems witness the search for a transcendent colloquy Dog’s Life that explores itself in the meaning and form of the poem. They achieve this The professor and the dog’s life. The school is the temple of knowledge. through both permanence and Frustration on all planes. The master of the establishment variability. The best Latin American The sense of trouble inside the teeth And his mustache poetry tends toward this variability, When chalk scrapes. which is also seen in the younger poets Like an old movie lover The professor and the exact woman. of the ’70s and ’80s. The nakedness of the professor’s wife The professor and the precise woman. (The look breaks on an owl, Where do you find the precise woman?! Variability and Chaos in the The hair is too plain) A woman who is what she is Poetry of Nicanor Parra Leaving out the kiss on the cheek A woman who doesn’t look like a man. (More difficult to stop than to begin) This variability is also a principal The pain obscures the vision, The home is a field of battle. characteristic of the poetry of Nicanor The wrinkles that keep coming, The woman defends herself with her legs. Parra (b. 1914) of Chile. It is a The age of your own students, variability that is composed of images The repeated signals of disrespect. The sexual problems of the old that destabilize reading, visions that are The way of walking down the hall. To appear in an anthology, surrealistic and that practice irony, To bring on artificial spasms. making fun of the reader and above You can take the insults But not the artificial smile, As yet the professor has no remedy: all making fun of the world. They are The talk that leaves you nauseated. The professor is observing ants. poems that are written with the purpose of re-creating chaos and transparency. – Nicanor Parra [M.W.] Perhaps this chaos and transparency are characteristics of postmodernity as seen from the point of view of that hybrid zone of poetic language. below, written originally in English, in & to the Son & to the Holy Ghost The poetry of Nicanor Parra does which the poet ironizes the world of unless otherwise instructed not resist making sense, quite the signs and warnings in the cultures of the By the way contrary. If we are able, through the late 20th and early 21st centuries. We also hold these truths to be mist of its chaos, to laugh at its ironic self evident tone, then each time we read it we are In case of fire That all man [sic] are created admitting that difficulty is not a virtue. Do not use elevators That they have been endowed In his poetry there is a chancy chaos Use stairways by their creator and a transparency, as in the poetry of unless otherwise instructed With certain inalienable rights . The critic Guillermo That among these are: Life Sucre affirms that Parra introduces chaos No smoking Liberty & the pursuit of happiness in the form of humor. Parra’s chaos, says No littering & last but not least Sucre, can provoke laughter and even No shitting that 2 + 2 makes 4 hilarity, but the reader who laughs No radio playing unless otherwise instructed knows that later a more secret anguish unless otherwise instructed awaits (266). The rediscovery of the Please Flush Toilet The text has been constructed of world (filled with light or darkness) After Each Use fragments of public discourse welded is always a new occasion, so that his Except When Train together in order to find, ironically, an poetry continually surprises us, making Is Standing At Station internal coherence in the poem. They us laugh at our own misfortune. Parra’s Be thoughtful are “ready-made” phrases that follow in speaker observes the most available Of The Next Passenger the footsteps of Marcel Duchamp. elements of daily life (an overcoat, a Onward Christian Soldiers Instead of great poetic showcasing, the tree, a plaza, a dove, retired people) as Workers of the World unite Chilean poet, always observant, writes well as the vast world and its laws. We have nothing to loose [sic] the poem using the “warnings” of Such is the case in “Warnings” (301) but our life Glory to the Father airports, public restrooms, restaurants

HOFSTRAHORIZONS 5

and supermarkets. The world is full of artifacts that are true works of art; in this case, the artifacts are words that, when placed in another context, give new meaning to the poem. These arti- facts, in the form of warnings, shift in importance throughout the poem from a lesser degree to a greater degree, according to the priorities and duties demanded of every citizen or of every helpless person who wanders through the great developed cities. The streets in cities such as New York and London are packed full of “warnings” for the common pedestrian, just as in the train stations or in Protestant churches – in any church, for that matter. Postmodern cities, in this respect, are transformed into gilded jailhouses, since if one decides to live in one such “paradise,” one must obey the rules or pay the cor- responding fines for breaking them. Regarding these rules, the ironic tone of the expression “unless otherwise instructed” produces the premonition of both chaos and humor in the same context. Thus the poem becomes a game and a mockery of the apparent order in the postmodern developed world. A view of Isla Negra from ’s house. Photo by Miguel-Angel Zapata. On the other hand, it behooves us to ask whether this practice of is placed in the marketplace of post- Y si supiera si ha de volver; progressive dislocation is a product of modernity, adding humor in a literary y si supiera qué mañana entrará postmodernity, and of the world that context that privileges the absurd. a entregarme las ropas bien lavadas, mi aquella changes every instant, or whether it has Even when critics and Parra lavandera del alma. Qué mañana entrará always existed (in which case there will himself define some of his texts as satisfecha, capulí de orfebrería, dichosa de probar be transgressions in every era coincident anti-poetic, these texts contain a que sí sabe, que sí puede with its inevitable ruptures). I would dialogic tension between the poetic ¡COMO NO VA A PODER! tentatively suggest that the poetry of and the anti-poetic. The poetic aspect azular y planchar todos los caos. Nicanor Parra not only belongs to post- seeks linearity and circularity, a method modernity but also that it is a continua- derived from the ancient Greek poet and And if only I know she’d come back; tion of European aesthetic modernity, philosopher Parmenides, who in his and if only I know what morning she’d come in which struggled against all norms and writings catalogs “accepted” elements of to hand me my laundered clothes, my own that whose most pertinent representative for poetic tradition since Virgil and Horace. laundress of the soul. What morning she’d come in this discussion is Baudelaire. Here I The anti-poetic, then, is the opposite: satisfied, tawny berry of handiwork, happy to refer not only to the economic infra- abandoning all solemnity by using sar- prove that yes she does know, that yes she can structure of a nation or to a specific castic and corrosive irony and humor, HOW COULD SHE NOT! social stratum but also to language itself accompanied by a colloquial language bleach and iron all the chaoses. and its varied components. The Chilean that is enriched by Chilean idioms. – From “VI” poet uses some resources of modernity This sort of combining of elements had Translation by Clayton Eshelman to achieve a weighty amalgamation of already been practiced by César Vallejo elements of post-1950 Chilean and Latin (Perú, 1892-1938) in Trilce (1922). American society. In this way, his poetry One stanza of his poem “VI” reads:

6 HOFSTRAHORIZONS Parra’s contribution consists of universalizing the practice of the quotid- ian, basing his discourse on a polyphony that revitalizes and preserves popular Chilean speech. In addition, the titles of his poems present a new tone within Latin , which began in the 1950s, for example: “Viva la cordillera de los Andes,” “El galán imperfecto,” “La poesía terminó conmigo,” “Lo que el difunto dijo de sí mismo,” among others. In contrast to Baudelaire’s disenchantment with the progress of Paris, which is witnessed in many of his poems, Parra’s speaker occasionally distances himself from the crowds of cities in order to return to his “village,” representing family members A partial view of Parra’s house. Photo by Miguel-Angel Zapata. such as mother and grandmother in a according to the circumstance of the precise setting. Parra does not write poem and its aim. Each text has its own poems about the solitude of crowds. construction: in some cases we see Benedetto Croce points out that Parra’s work often Chilean idioms combined with cultured Baudelaire approached certain aesthetic speech, and in others the poems are conceptions with sarcasm and disdain, travels between apparently traditional and without any such as the religion of love; love as the syntactic dislocation. highest, most noble expression; and One of the distinctive traits of passionate love and the erotic adoration poetry and prose, Parra’s poetry is the dissonance created that consecrates its object (316-17). by the variation in tone. His texts are We need only examine some of Parra’s between narrative evidence of a radical experience that poems, such as “Mujeres” (“Women”) responds to the hybrid and nutritious and “El hombre imaginario” (“The bricolage within the tunnels of Imaginary Man”), to understand and image. For this language, history and society. this influence. reason, it is not The contextualization of his poetry within so-called postmodernity can be Rereading the Modern World understood within what García unusual to find in his Canclini has called postmodern When we read Parra, we also hibridity. He points out that postmod- encounter the globalizing project that ernism is not a style but rather the the modernists initiated. Critic Ivan poems a combina- simultaneous presence of all styles, the Shulman points out that the point where the chapters of art history literary movement functions tion of poetry and (and the history of poetry) and of as a process of reading the modern folklore interlace with each other and world from the individual perspective of with new cultural technologies (307). the subject. And this process, he adds, anti-poetry. Parra cuts across the territory of was begun in the second half of the 19th various literary currents, traces of century and continues to the present multiple and cannot be categorized which are clearly evident in his with cultural and literary adjustments within a single movement. Parra’s work poems through the practice of collage. and transformations (5). Parra’s texts often travels between poetry and prose, His work is a tumultuous presence in start from the individual perspective of between narrative and image. For this that it is almost impossible not to a poetic subject who mocks the contem- reason, it is not unusual to find in his recognize these multiple currents, porary and at the same time disdains poems a combination of poetry and though certain critical readings tend both the earthly and the divine. The anti-poetry. Everything is arranged to speak only of his renowned sources of his poems, consequently, are

HOFSTRAHORIZONS 7 “anti-poetry.” The effectiveness of his intensity. The gold and the fire that give poems is rooted in knowing how to warmth in the winter denote a sign of manage images in a way that is lively protection together with the heat of the and agile while at the same time silver sun in summer. The landscape applying a radical disharmony. combines an idyllic scene, where peace On his immense slate we can trace the reigns over dividing lines between earth, air, water a natural world that privileges the and the abyss. He is the poet of the image of the tree, with a reprimand: hybrid caricature and the European collage, the meeting ground of the Seguramente que tu madre English ballad and the Chilean cueca. no sabe el cuervo que ha criado, The poet disorients the reader, te cree un hombre verdadero, seeming to be a poet of circularity in yo pienso todo lo contrario: some circumstances and a poet of frag- creo que no hay en todo Chile ments or of a rigorous metric in others. niño tan mal intencionado … (19) And in yet other instances he remains Nicanor Parra’s typewriter. Photo by Miguel-Angel Zapata. faithful to free verse, endowing it Surely your mother with an internal tension that can be more lyrical ones — “El da la fruta does not realize what a crow she has raised, compared only to baroque music. deleitosa/ más que la leche, más que el she believes you to be a true man, For example, in “Defensa del árbol” nardo/ leña de oro en el invierno,/ I believe the opposite is true: the poet personifies some elements of sombra de plata en el verano ... crea los I think that in all of Chile nature, with the central figure being the vientos y los pájaros” (“He (the tree) there’s not a boy with worse image of the tree. Here he combines offers the delicious fruit/ better than intentions than you colloquial and straightforward expres- milk/ better than the nard/ golden kin- sions — “creo que no hay en todo Chile/ dling in the winter/ silver shade in the – Translation by Janice Kincaid niño tan mal intencionado” (“I don’t summer ... He creates breezes and believe that in all Chile there is a boy birds”) (19). (Translated by author). The with such bad intentions”) — with combination of colors suggests a special

Child’s Play

I. A child lands on the cathedral tower Meanwhile the child They exchange impressions about the Land Beyond starts playing with the hands on the clock God or whatever you want to call him some look for things they had lost leans against them to make them stop moving Destiny or just plain Chronos bored to death as if by magic the people passing are frozen takes off again flying toward the Public Cemetery. others buried to their knees in the earth in the following position: move toward the cemetery gate. II. one foot in the air As indicated in the preceding poem III. looking backward like the pillar of Lot the playful child takes off for the cemetery Laughing like crazy lighting a cigarette, etc., etc. breaks open sepulchers the child goes back to the city Then he grabs the hands and spins them full speed the dead rise from their graves gives birth to monsters stops them dead—spins them the other way noises are heard in the distance creates earthquakes and the people passing are jolted—brake abruptly there is total confusion. hairy women run naked go backward lickety-split old folks who look like fetuses laugh and smoke. like the images in a silent movie The dead seem tired they trot north to south their feet are covered with dirt An electric storm strikes or move solemnly without even leaving their graves coming to a climax in the shape of a crucified woman. against the hands of the clock. they talk excitedly among themselves A couple get married–have children and get divorced like athletes in the shower. in fractions of a second –Nicanor Parra [M.W.] the children get married too—die.

8 HOFSTRAHORIZONS The poet’s tree is a daily companion If for Parra the stone is a symbol of that one” could write the poem, making fun (“no hay amigo como el árbol”) which is trying to destroy the tree, the of the speaker. Like Góngora (rigorous, (“There is no friend like a tree”), shade, the rose of life, the tree in Vallejo lucid), Parra creates a distinct language, someone whom he can count on. is one among ruined trees, alluding to a not a school to be followed. The tree is not raised up to a shining false sun. Parra, on the other hand, Parra’s poetry possesses a multiplic- home in the heavens but rather to the addresses the tree indirectly. He does ity of valences. It continually recon- solid presence of the earth. On the not wish to speak to it in any other way; structs itself, making new alliances and other hand, the presence of the its form adheres to the archetype new meanings. Each poem sets up an stone (“Por qué te entregas a esa of his poetics: chaos emerges internal communication and a new piedra/ como puñal envenenado”) systematically, with the stone as the meaning that changes and grows with (“Why do you give yourself to that projectile that arises from death and each reading (Guiraud, 87-94). stone/ like a poisoned dagger”) destruction. He transmits his message His poems respond to a lack of is a symbol that represents the void through his reprimanding of an consistent paradigms; they are and destruction of the natural world. almond-eyed boy. Neither does he hyperrealist, impressionistic, and pop The poem is expressing a desire for delight in dreams as in Rilke, in an game. The poet tells us that he will permanence in the face of the “almost unconscious contemplation” “retract everything he has said” possible destruction of a fundamental (Bachelard, 256). (“se retracta de todo lo dicho”). He says resource for the air and for dreams. The Chilean poet, rather, says to to the reader, “burn this book ... it does The tree is present as a symbol of the reader and to the world that the tree not represent what I wanted to say ... salvation; yet its presence goes beyond words have avenged themselves on me” that of a decorative symbol: all human (“quema este libro … no representa beings need the tree, for it is the water It is the language lo que quise decir ... las palabras se and wind of all our days. vengaron de mí”) (163). This segment For Parra, as for many other of public speech, can be connected to the poetic nothing- Latin American poets, nature is clearly ness of Mallarmé, whose poetic nothing- present, but it acquires a distinctive and it sounds ness is presented in the form of a doubt tonality. For example, in Vallejo’s that always obsessed him: “¿Hay algún poetry we find a multilayered relationship motivo específico para escribir?” (“Is with various elements of the natural so familiar that it there a reason to write?”) (De Man, world. Yet it is also clear that Vallejo did 101). Parra has the same doubt in the not feel an empathy with nature as did seems as though face of language and the world. The the Romantic poets, such as Victor Hugo poet therefore once more takes up his and José María Heredia (Hart, 263). anyone could have task to write the poem, again and again. In Vallejo’s’ “El libro de la naturaleza” At the same time he retracts what he (“The Book of Nature”), which Hart stud- has written in order to regenerate ies in his article “Vallejo’s ‘King of Swords’: spoken it. chaos and humor, making fun of the The Portrayal of Nature in ‘El Libro de la reader and, indeed, of the world: Naturaleza’” (“The Book of Nature”), the (the word, the sign) should be protected tree is figured in a different way: by means of a complex framework that Perdóname lector is both literary and living. The tree is Amistoso lector Profesor del sollozo - he dicho a un árbol - the central character in this survival Que no me pueda despedir de ti palo de azogue, tilo plot. The poet begins his lyrical Con un abrazo fiel: rumoreante, a la orilla del Marne, un buen alumno journey in an exhortation to the child to Me despido de ti leyendo va en tu naipe, en tu hojarasca, recognize that the tree is his father or Con una triste sonrisa forzada. entre el agua evidente y su sol falso … his brother. We see that Parra’s use of (Poemas para combater la calvicie, 163) colloquial language is crucial for Professor of sobs - I’ve said to a tree- conveying his intent. It is the language Forgive me, reader, good reader stick of quicksilver, murmuring of public speech, and it sounds so If I can not leave you lime, to the shore of the Marne, a good student familiar that it seems as though anyone With a faithful gesture. I leave you reading goes in your card, in your fallen leaves, could have spoken it. The poem seems With a forced and sad smile. between the evident water and the false sun … almost too accessible to the reader. (Poems and Antipoems, 149) This is one of the many strategies Parra – Translation by Miller Williams uses to give the impression that “any-

HOFSTRAHORIZONS 9

Footnote Croce, Benedetto. (1998). “Baudelaire.” Parra, Nicanor. (1995). Poemas para Poesía y no poesía. Notas sobre la combatir la calvicie. Antología. 1 Deterritorialization may mean to take the control literatura europea del siglo XIX. Trad. de Julio Ortega, compilador. Santiago: and order away from a land or place (territory) that Guillermo Fernández. México: UNAM. Fondo de Cultura Económica. is already established. It is to undo what has been done. For example, when the Spanish conquered the De Man, Paul. (1996). “La nada poética: Shulman, Ivan A. (2000, Mayo). “Vigencia , the Spanish eliminated many symbols of acerca de un soneto hermético de del 900: El proyecto prolongado del Aztec beliefs and rituals. Reterritorialization usually Mallarmé.” Escritos críticos. Trad. de pasado o ‘la insoluble cárcel de la existencia.’” follows. The same happens in Latin American poetry. Javier Yague Bosch. Madrid: Visor. Hispanic Poetry Review. Vol. 2, núm. 3

References García Canclini, Ernesto. (1990). Culturas Sucre, Guillermo. (1983). La máscara, la híbridas. Estrategias para entrar y salir de transparencia. México: Fondo de Cultura Bachelard, Gastón. (1997). El aire y los la Modernidad. México: Editorial Grijalbo. Económica. sueños. Ensayo sobre la imaginación del movimiento. Trad. de Ernestina de Guiraud, Pierre. (1969). “Le gouffre de Vallejo, César. (1998). Poemas completos. Champourcin. México: Fondo de Baudelaire.” Essais de stylistique. Paris: Lima: Ediciones Copé. Cultura Económica. Editions Klincksieck. Williams, Miller. (1967). Poems and Carrasco Pirard, Eduardo. (2001). Hart, Stephen. (1998, Fall). “Vallejo’s “King Antipoems. Edited by Miller Williams. “Pensamientos en torno a la antipoesía.” of Swords”: The Portrayal of Nature in New York: New Directions. Psicoanálisis Parra Nada. “El Libro de la Naturaleza.” Hispanic Antipoesía & Psicoanálisis. Santiago: Journal. Vol. 19, no 2. Ediciones CESOC.

Realizing that a university setting would He is also the author of several books be beneficial for a poet, Professor Zapata was of essays, critical editions, interviews and led to his current profession, which enables him anthologies. Professor Zapata received the to teach others while writing books of poetry Latino Literature Prize and the Hostos Essay and literary criticism, as well as books about Award in 2003. His poetry has been lauded other subjects that interest him. Ironically by many, including Alvaro Mutis and Mario perhaps, his forthcoming book ponders the Vargas Llosa, recipients of the Miguel de relationship between poetry and the visual arts, Cervantes Literature Prize; Billy Collins, and painting in particular. When comparing America’s 2002-03 poet laureate; and Carlos writing poems to creating textiles, and in this G. Belli, Peruvian poet laureate. case the intricate textiles of Matisse, he says, The subjects of his poetry are often they both require “the same concentration, the two that tend to be conflicting: the spiritual and same peace, and the same patience.” animals (or bestiary). Dogs, cats, birds, the Professor Zapata is an associate professor deserts and jogging over the dead* are some of Latin American literature in the Department of his subjects, he says. He lives on Long Island Miguel-Angel Zapata was introduced to of Romance Languages and Literatures, and and owns many of his own animals, including the arts in his hometown of Lima, Peru, where, has been teaching at Hofstra University since a snake that he claims belongs to his daughter. as a young boy, he attended a private school 2001. Prior to his position at Hofstra, he taught And although he likes to play tennis if the for painting. Frustrated with the medium, and at universities worldwide, including universities weather is right for it, at any time of year you his inability to depict what was in his mind’s in Chile, Peru, Mexico and the United States. can find him bike riding or taking long walks, eye, he realized he would never be a successful He has studied at the Universidad Nacional where he continues to commune with nature painter and turned away from the arts for a Mayor de San Marcos in Lima, Peru, and and conjure more ideas and more poems. –WB brief period of time. By the time he entered earned a Ph.D. in philosophy at Washington high school though, he had found his true University in St. Louis, Missouri. To date, he has *See “Thighs Upon the Grass” from A Sparrow calling in poetry and literature, a passion written eight books of poetry in Spanish, one of in the House of Seven Patios (2005). that has never abandoned him, and that he which, titled A Sparrow in the House of Seven hopes never will. Patios, was translated into English last year.

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