A lot of
Chilean people think Pablo Neruda is the best poet ever. When they say “Chile,
country of poets” in general they are thinking in Neruda or Mistral, our two Nobel.
I think this is a horrible mistake. First because Chile is not the earth of
poets anymore; second, because we are not considering the prose; and third,
because Nicanor Parra has been forget.
I don’t
know if I could say Nicanor Parra is the best Chilean ever. I don’t like to
construct hierarchies for people classification, people are not like numbers.
But I can say you this (anti)poet is the most important writer of (anti)poetry.
Why on brackets? because I think there are not something more poetic than the
antipoetry of Parra.
He
demolished the classic structure of the verses as much is possible. He takes the
idyllic and distant poetry and converts it in something ordinary and human. In
other words, he put in the street and houses something that always belonged to
libraries of the high classes. For the other say -or in it consequence- the
contents of this new way to write, changed to. The romantic love or romantic
death, are topics of the past. Nicanor Parra began to inspire on the common,
the routine, the injustice, also he inspired on love, but a Chilean love, something
more picaresque.
In sum, he did an act of rebellion and gave to
the people the faculty to express them interiority in an easy way. He gave to
the people the opportunity to reclaims and up in arms from de verses. He killed
the traditional poetry.
Once I read
an interesting interview of Parra. The woman gave him an old wine and took his
door. He obviously accepted the wine and let the woman came in. More than ask
him something of his work, I like to have a conversation all day with Parra. I
don’t want to ask I only want to hear. I could give him a wine as a present, a
whisky if he prefers. But yes, exists a question, I want to know how he forget
to a lover, how he can be a happy man.
PARRA POWER.
Nicolás Parra, el emprendedor de la cultura. Gracias, Nicolás.
