Poems & Antipoems is one of my favourites in that Cape series of little
hardbacks from the 60s that included Charlies Olson & Baudelaire, Nazim
('Abstruse? Me, abstruse?') Hikmet, and Karl von Frisch on bees.
During that time I kept out of circumstances that were too full of mystery
As people with stomach ailments avoid heavy meals,
I preferred to stay at home inquiring into certain questions
Concerning the propagation of spiders...
from _The Trap_, translation by W.S. Merwin.
Best,
Bill H
----- Original Message -----
From: Hugh Tolhurst <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, July 03, 2000 11:45 PM
Subject: Re: Nicanor Parra, "Young Poets" and "Chronos"
> With my apologies to New Directions,
> Miller Williams and Nicanor Parra,
> the poems below are
> excerpted from Emergency Poems...
>
> Young Poets
>
>
> Write as you will
> In whatever style you like
> Too much blood has run under the bridge
> To go on believing
> That only one road is right.
>
> In poetry everything is permitted.
>
> With only this condition of course,
> You have to improve the blank page.
>
> -- Nicanor Parra
>
>
>
>
> chronos
>
>
> In Santiago, Chile
> The days are interminably long:
> Several eternities in a day.
>
> Like the vendors of seaweed
> Travelling on the backs of mules:
> You yawn - you yawn again.
>
> Yet the weeks are short
> The months go racing by
> And the years have wings.
>
>
> - Nicanor Parra
>
>
> The translator is Miller Williams,
> Emergency Poems, New Directions 1972
> selects from various Chilean editions
> of Parra's work.
>
>
> biography
>
> Nicanor Parra was born in 1914 in Chillan, a small town in southern Chile,
> the son of a schoolteacher. In 1933 he entered the Instituto Pedagogico
> of the University of Chile, and qualified as a teacher of mathematics and
> physics in 1938, one year after his first book appeared: Cancionero
> sin Nombre. After teaching in Chilean secondary schools, he went in 1943
> to Brown University in the U.S. to continue his studies in physics. He
> returned to Chile as Professor at the University in 1946. Since 1952
> Parra has been Professor of Theoretical Physics in Santiago, and has
> read his poetry in England, France, Russia, Mexico, Cuba, and the
> United States. He has published several books, including one in
> collaboration with his great compatriot, Pablo Neruda.
>
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