ALTHOUGH I HAVENT'T COME PREPARRAED
traducido del español por Dave Oliphant
translated from the Spanish by Dave Oliphant

THE POETRY AND ANTIPOETRY OF CHILE

For a nation of only 13 million inhabitants, Chile has the distinction of being the birthplace of at least five world-renowned poets, two of those, Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda, winners of the Nobel Prize for literature. A third poet who has been touted as deserving of the Noble Prize is the 84-year-old self-proclaimed antipoet, Nicanor Parra. The concept of antipoetry as prescribed by Parra -"You can do anything in poetry"; "in sincerity lies the danger" and "truth is a collective error" -owes something of its iconoclastic outrageousness to an earlier Chilean poet, Vicente Huidobro, who declared that "the poet is a little God" and "an adjective, when it doesn't give life, takes it away.". Following both Huidobro and Parra, a fifth Chilean poet, Enrique Lihn, carried on the antipoetry tradition by attacking both his medium and himself as the messenger, asserting that poetry is "a big pile of muck stirred by chance" and the poet is "a rotten little rhetorician." Despite what may seem an overly negative and therefore limited approach to the making of a poem, Chilean poets have produced in the antipoetic mode some of the most provocative and original writing of the last half of the twentieth century.

The present selection of work by a handful of Chilean poets is hardly representative of the wide range of styles and techniques employed by writers up and down their long, thin, and highly-varied land. Only one of the poets, Francisco Véjar, exemplifies a more romantic tradition that has always existed in Chilean poetry and perhaps has drawn its inspiration most fully in recent times from the work of Jorge Teiller, who, like Neruda and Parra, was a product of the country's rainy southern region. But the emphasis here, necessarily, is on the more antipoetic style, which has, through the influence of both Parra and Lihn, had such a profound impact on the younger generation of Chilean poets. The first poem offered here is an early work by Enrique Lihn, which was only discovered in 1998, ten years after the poet's death and some 45 years after its original composition. Lihn's "Portrait" is clearly a self-portrait, and even though its writing antedates the publication of Nicanor Parra's defining collection of Poems and Antipoems in 1954, this early poem indicates that Lihn was well aware of the work of Parra, which had begun its influence from the time of his first published collection in 1937. Already apparent in Lihn's self-portrait is his characteristic belittling of himself as a person and poet, which may remind one of Parra's declaration in his "Warning to the Reader," from Poems and Antipoems: "I`m proud of my shortcomings." Lihn may not exhibit the same type of humorous pride as Parra, but he certainly shares with him and Huidobro a sense of the poetic power of an anti view, of being a "little God" of an "exiled domain," of being "joyful in his grief." (For more of Lihn's poetry, see issues number 1 and 2 of The Dirty Goat.)

The antipoet of Chile is, by definition, a poet who both takes his writing seriously and yet can poke fun at his own foibles. This is demonstrated repeatedly in Nicanor Parra's longest and in some ways most ambitious poem, his over 400-line elegy in memory of his classmate and fellow poet, Luis Oyarzún. Like all of Parra's seriocomic antipoems, his homage to Oyarzún - first published in December 1997 in the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio- contains words and phrases difficult to render in another language, beginning in this case with the title, which plays on a speaker's traditional disclaimer that he has not come prepared to give a speech but then proceeds to talk on and on, in love with the sound of his own voice. Here, as elsewhere, Parra inserts additional letters into certain words -in this case "prepared"- in order to form something of a pun on his own name. Similarly, he adds the letter "i" to the word "particular" for punning on the verb "culiar," one of the Chilean "f" words. Another instance of Parra's playfulness is when he changes the name of the teacher training or pedagogical school at the University of Chile by adding an "i" and an "a" to "peda" to form the word for "stone." These are examples of Parra's methods for satirizing both individuals and institutions, even as, by contrast, he eulogizes a man who distinguised himself as a university teacher and administrator.

Parra's more serious side is illustrated by his wide reading, which takes the form of allusions to Greek and German philosophy, Chilean literature (naming, among others, Gabriela Mistral, Enrique Lihn, Jorge Millas, and Enrique Lafourcade), and Shakespeare (Hamlet, which, along with King Lear, Parra has brilliantly translated for the Chilean stage). In addition, Parra's poem touches on such contemporary issues as ecology and pollution, the population explosion, politics (seeing all forms of government as dictatorship; asking whether a return to socialism would make any difference), economics (proposing the Mapuche Indian of Chile's system of minimal subsistence), sports (both soccer and "Collaborative Sonnets"), and religious belief and practice. Throughout the 46 sections of his elegy, Parra playfully manipulates language to achieve a running commentary on what he called in his first volume "The Vices of the Modern World". In his middle 80s the antipoet continues to create lines that reveal the hypocrisy beneath our contemporary word and deed, summarizing much of the period since the 1930s. The antipoet even manages to look into the future to predict "What Will Happen in This Next Century" when he sees human life cloned, individuality eliminated in terms of no more private coffins, and his own creation, a Chilean vagabond-wit, the Christ of Elqui, elected as his country's president. Parra's homage to Luis Oyarzún also reveals how rooted his antipoetry is in popular culture, as he alludes in the stanza entitled "What You Hear Ladies & Gentlemen" to a familiar refrain about Father Gatica who doesn't practice what he preaches, unlike Oyarzún, who practiced but didn't preach.

The younger poets of Chile have been deeply affected by Nicanor Parra's irreverent manner and his willingness to speak on any subject, especially through the most mundane objects or activities. This is especially evident in the work of two women poets, Heddy Navarro Harris and Carmen Gloria Berríos. Both illustrate the antipoetic mode through their very direct and witty use of language. As Parra recommends, the language of poetry should not be unlike what the reader speaks, or as Huidobro before him advised, no adjectives that overkill. Harris limits herself to a simple, concise analogy to make her single point on love, while Berríos can work with food and flavor as a way of discussing other timeless matters like transcendence and revenge.

Tomás Harris and Diego Maquieira also speak as the reader speaks, although they may be talking of topics that are further from the reader's immediate experience. Harris (no relation to Heddy Navarro) goes back to the period of the Spanish conquistadors for his subject matter, but his timeless theme, like that of Berríos, is revenge, which recalls for me William Carlos Williams' 1925 "DeSoto and the New World." The witty ending of Harris' poem is different from the wit of Parra, as is the narrative style Harris employs. Both Harris and Maquieira have in fact created their own approach, yet have taken a page from Parra by finding a way of doing anything in poetry. Their poems include video games, Phantom jets, gorillas, Renaissance paintings, movie stars, and historical figures from the mafia and the Spanish conquest and Inquisition. Like Parra, they satirize contemporary society, but rather than attacking directly, Harris and Maquieira tend to do so through scenes unassociated with modernday Chile but drawn from other places and earlier eras. Nonetheless, the parallels with political developments in Chile are undeniable, although Maquieira's dark, futuristic allegories may be difficult to decipher for those who did not live through the censorship of a military regime. Maquieira's reference to liberty should remind readers, however, that Chile, over time, has enjoyed the longest tradition of democracy among Latin American nations.

Political difference has dominated the news from Chile since the period of Allende's minority government, and although the country is prospering as never before, poets like Harris and Maquieira take a dim view of Chile's present and future. The effects of dictatorship still linger in their poetry, making it more obtuse than Parra's antipoetry. Rarely do these two younger poets sound a hopeful note. By dramatic contrast, Francisco Véjar's poem is romantically optimistic, which demonstrates that even in Chile there are still poets who believe that the dreams and bridges they offer are not impossible.

ALTHOUGH I HAVEN`T COME PREPARRAED

traducido del español por Dave Oliphant
translated from the Spanish by Dave Oliphant

WHAT I FEARED WOULD HAPPEN HAS

The speakers who have gone before me
Have said it all
Practically everthing that can be said on the subject
What's to be done in a case like this

Don't know

THE ONLY THING I DO KNOW

Is that I am in debt to Luis Oyarzún
And not even this do I know so well
We are in debt to Luis Oyarzún

The one in a million essayist
Perpetual Dean of Fine Arts
Director for Life
Of the Society of Chilean Writers
The Compleat Traveler
His generation's Minister of Faith
The Academic Orator par excellence

THE FIRST IMAGE THAT COMES TO OUR MIND

When we say Luis Oyarzún
Is The Thinker by Rodin

HE WAS CAPABLE OF SPEAKING OF ANYTHING

Even soccer
If the historic moment required it
With complete understanding of circumstances
Uttered with parlimentary eloquence
With a philosophic sense of humor
Disarmed the disputant
Hamlet
......... Prince of Denmark in person
Of course a few pounds overweight

LITTLE FRENCH ILLUSTRATED DICTIONARY

We called him that with great affection
After all he wasn't very tall

The truth is that he knew more than all of us put together
Including the very same Jorge Millas
In spite of being the youngest of the group
Which included besides
The impressionist painter Carlos Pedraza
Dr. Hermann Niemeyer
Engineer Raúl Montecinos
Specialist in Subterreanean Waters
Héctor Casanova
Who became Secretary General
Of this University if I' m not mistaken
& one or two other peripheral electrons

Not to mention Jorge Cáceres
Who slit his veins in the bathtub

BARROS ARANA NATIONAL INSTITUTE

........................ 3535 St. Domingo

Decade of the 30s
North side of Quinta Normal
A huge building of 2 and 3 floors
Matucana
............. Mapocho
............................ all that...
Would so much beauty be possible today?

To begin with we couldn't even afford to drop dead

No wonder they called us the Immortals

AND THINGS STARTED TO HAPPEN

The dictatorship of Ibánez
The Socialist Republic of 100 days
The Popular Front

He was often seen
Surrounded by the iconoclastic young
In the gardens of the Pebblegogy
Or in the Office of the Bonebreaker:

I have been ordered to liquidate poetry
A lost cow clarifies the attitude in facing a found cow
A rise in bread prices provokes another increase

HIS SOUL FRIENDS

Lafourcade
.............. Jodorowsky
................................. Lihn
One took to him at first sight
But his shadow was Roberto Humeres
The painter
......... the flanneur
.................. the dandy
Just returned from Paris:
Roberto Humeres Solar
Ghost of the Freighter
Corrupter of minors & Majors

IN POLITICAL MATTERS

He is remembered for his eclectic ideas
He was a common & everyday man
He in the proper sense of the word
Has it:
Without heavy-duty aspirations
Fifty fifty according to Chinese friends
Independent?

It would be unjust to say that he fell
Into the accommodating scepticism
Of the intellectuals
Self-proclaimed liberals

Is there anyone in Chile I ask myself
More sexually democratic than he?
Important!

I WOULDN'T WANT TO LET THE TRAIN GO BY

Without recalling an artifact
That continues to be quite illustrative
No matter how obsolete it may seem at first sight:

They're all dictatorships my lovely friend:

We are only permitted to choose
Between theirs & ours

SOMEBODY IS SPREADING THE RUMOR

That in the library of Luis Oyarzún
There is a black hole:
It lacks Zarathustra
Ein Buch für Alles und Keinen
A book for all & for none

Maybe that's the reason
For the darkness is hiding him

But you tell me in all honesty
Which Chilean writer of that period
Showed up at the funeral of God
Seriously
We were all in jail
Writing incendiary poems
Against the capitalist leech
Something that made Nietzsche smile
Whose social philosophy
Seems summed up in that old proverb
Never out of fashion
Der Wille Zur Macht
The Will to Power

Regardless of the system
Those on top sit on those below

BORN ADMIRER OF SAN CRISTÓBAL HILL

He would climb it up & down
In the twinkling of an eye
He was pleased by antique furniture
Secondhand bookstores
Excursions to Puchuncaví

Often he would suddenly stop
To examine with a magnifying glass
Something that attracted his attention
A flower
............. an insect
........................... whatever
Yes sir:
He was a lover of nature

Even more:
A defender of nature
Passionate & lucid simultaneously
In an era of almost total ecological illiteracy
Aesthetician?
........... But moderate...
Modernist?
Like all the people of his time
An outsider?
If you tell me who isn't one
I'll give you a chocolate bar

Raise your hands
Those who are rightfully here
Exceptions there are but very few

IT BOTHERED HIM

He turned red as a tomato
When his cruel fellow students
Hummed to his face

Everything little grows:
But Little Oyarzún no

Everything little grows:
But Little Oyarzún no

Oh Susanna
How beautiful life is no

What a clueless bunch!
Even Lieutenant Bello comes up short

THOSE TIMES

We all went around like lunatics
Looking for the fifth leg
On that cat in the dark:
Lucho was the only one who found it
His exact words
Look them up in his Intimate Journal
Considered by Leonidas Morales
As one of the greatest forces
Of modern Chilean literature

Aside from Enrique Lihn of course

WHEN WE APPROACHED TO CONGRATULATE HIM

Because his predictions had proven true
He responded unperturbed
What can I tell you
........ . I'm infallible:

Erect me a monument
& see how famous I become

LUIS OYARZÚN WAS LIKE THAT

Peña on his mother's side
The first metaphysician of the Mapocho
Which is the authentic name of Santiago, Chile

Mistral loved him like a son

He dazzled us with his wit

AS IF THIS WERE NOT ENOUGH

He was also a Full-time Bohemian

Listen to the boys of the Bosco
The dreamers of the Iris Cafe
The insomniacs of Forest Park
& (as)specially
The incorrigible sleepwalking early birds
From the Inn of the Chief Magistrate
Among whose number we all are counted

COLLABORATIVE SONNETS

One of his favorite sports

CRITICISMS?

One or two:
He wasn't a schizophrenic
It looks bad not being schizophrenic
For anyone aspiring to say something

I don't know if I make myself clear:
Too great a facility with words
Lacks surprise
............. lacks foolishness
Everything is in its place
Sings just right
But from within a cage

He has more of earth than of the extraterrestrial

His marmoreal perfection works against him

IT`S CLEAR THAT

Everything would change in a flash
Once we started to ramble on
Around a bottle of wine
Not Even His Holiness the Bishop of Rome
Escaped his brutal jokes

Quotation marks:
The Highest Pontiff's behind the times:
He lacks a bibliography:

lf you don't draft once and for all
The Encyclical of Survival
I`ll do it myself

YOU WANT ME TO EMPHASIZE THE GOOD?

To leave what's problematic in the dark?
Sweep the dirt underneath the rug?
Socialist realism all over again?
Would have to think about it twice

AND THE MOVIE KEPT ROLLING

Radioactivity & Demographic Explosion
Butterflies on the way to extinction
Narcotraffic
.............. . AIDS
....................... Genocide
Garbage heaps reaching to the moon

Except for the Tower of Pisa
All the monuments falling down

RUSSIANS & YANKEES

Nineteenth-century economics
Prior to the Concept of Finitude
Depredators by nature

Little is gained with Socialism
The industries nationalized
Pollute as much or more than before

Hello?
With whom am I speaking...
Wasted time ......... No one answers

PRACTICING CATHOLIC SO FAR AS I KNOW HE WAS NOT

Which shouldn't come as a surprise to any
Our teachers were
Radicals
............. Masons
.......................... & firemen
Or socialists like Eugenio González
Another Hamlet in strict mourning
Like Oscar Vera
Impeccable translator of Cemetery by the Sea:

Zeno
....... oh cruel Zeno
............... Zeno of Elea
You have wounded me with your feathered arrow
Which forever flies but never flies

STILL HE FOLLOWED THE EXAMPLE OF CHRIST

He didn't leave a descendant
Read for that he didn't contribute to the Demographic Explosion

He didn't go into exile
He lived till the end with his lady mother
Like Borges
............ like Benjamín Subercaseaux
Making himself deserving of
The epithet of Model Son
He didn't complete his studies in Law
& last but not least
He had the bright idea
Of dying in Valdivia
A goal from midfield!
Now we are asking him to come back alive

HE WAS BORN CALLING HIMSELF LUIS OYARZÚN

The narre that marked him all his life
Right up to the moment of his death
Even beyond death too

ANOTHER FEAT OF LUCHO

Possibly the greatest of all:
He freed himself from cuckoldry
Thanks
To an unprecedented stroke of genius:

Not to the marriage license
There's no other alternative:

It's impossible to be free of the horns
All it takes to have them is getting hitched
Unless one happens to be the King of Ithaca

Not to look any further
Let's take the case of Adam & Eve

YOU WILL FORGIVE I HOPE

My absolute poverty of metaphors
It's that I haven't come to Valdivia
To pose as a poet
But to discharge a sacred duty
Don't expect literature from me
At the expense of a friend
If that was the jury's idea
I'm ready to return the Prize
(Applause)

HOMEWORK

Luis Oyarzún's genealogical tree
He was very strict in that regard

Many of his relatives
Were used to summering at The Spa
According to express & repeated declaration
Onward & upward!
No Presidents in the family
But first ladies for sure
Doctors
.......... Archbishops
.............................. Engineers

LOVE FEAST IN THE HOME OF ANTONIO OYARZÚN

Former English teacher in Barros Arana
An uncle quite critical of his nephew
Who of course was not among those invited
Or he kept us waiting
I don't remember
Impossible to avoid the temptation
We gave ourselves over to putting down the absentee:
Doesn't show enough affection to his dad
Too gracious with his mom
Lately he has published little
No fiance has been heard of
It's not known exactly
Where he spends his weekends
Suspiciously clean-shaven
He would look better letting his mustache grow
He ought to finish his Law degree

WHAT GOOD DOES PHILOSOPHY DO

His students at the Pebblegogy asked him once
& the prophet in his land replied:

One can give classes in Philosophy

One earns little
......... but one survives

CHILE IS A COUNTRY OF PAYING ATTENTION

Luis Oyarzún declares in his journal

That couldn't be more true:
Become a soccer player buddy
Otherwise they won't give you the time of day

EXTREME OPPOSITES

I wanted to write the way one speaks
On the other hand he felt fine
Talking
Like someone reading a Heidegger essay

Trained voice we say today
But it was the spirit of the age

50 years of a brotherly fight

ONCE THEY FOUGHT IT OUT BAREKNUCKLED

As a result of the following consideration
Proposed by one of the opponents:

Christ is a robot
While Lenin is a human being

Lucho won battle after battle
But even so he lost the war

We ended up at the Emergency Room
Where they administered him mouth to mouth

The name of the winner:
Enrique Lafourcade

YOU SEEM LIKE GOD

Luis Oyarzún told
His undesirable interlocutor:
You are everywhere
& nobody can (stand to) see you

WHEN JORGE MILLAS DIED

I wrote the following

After a long and scandalous persecution
There has ceased to exist in this country
Professor Jorge Millas
The orator
........ the poet
The philosopher Jorge Millas Jiménez
Deemed by Moors & Christians alike
The most lucid man in Chile
The humblest
............. the most disinterested
As also the most incorruptible
For which reason

The Dictatorship took away his academlc chair
Condemning him to a premature death
By asphyxiation
.......... by starvation
..................... by insomnia
In Chile dignity is a crime

Jorge was an owl who couldn't live
Except in a cave of Platonic ideas

We are unable to express in words
The pain caused in us by his stations of the cross

Ladies and gentlemen how long will this last!

And the impotence to lift one's voice
And the sense of shame
In not daring to follow his example

His students of a lifetime
His friends who will never forget him

RIDICULOUS ISN'T IT?

All the love letters are
Ridiculous

They wouldn't be love letters if they were not
Ridiculous

Love letters if it is love
Have to be
Ridiculous

YOU WILL WONDER

What happened to the other Immortals
Practically all are six-foot under

If it weren't so late
(What time do you have . . .)
I would ask a minute of silence
For the good old boys so forgotten

They deserve it after all
Almost all won the National Award
Watchdogs of the Establishment
There's no greater embarrassment
Our intention was to change the world
And in the end the world changed us

Those who yesterday called for the Dictator's head
Are content today with seeing it better combed

It makes one weep oceans

I will end up shooting myself

THERE IS A FAIL-PROOF METHOD

For making an old man work for free
No matter how ruined or sickly he be:
Conferring on him a literary prize
For example the Luis Oyarzún Award
It's a prize only in name
It saves money
& kills two birds with one stone
Vanity brings him back to life
Isn't that so you Black-winged Devil

HISTORY WILL ABSOLVE HIM

I agree
But as for geography I doubt it

WHAT WILL HAPPEN IN THIS NEXT CENTURY?

Not even Your Lord Jesus Christ of Elqui has the faintest:

Human life will be cloned
Each man will have 7 wives
Cocaine base will be legalized
Bread & onions for everyone
We will find the Holy Grail
An end to individual coffins
A minimum of two corpses to a tomb
Lift up your hearts
Weeping willows in the Atacaman Desert
Christ of Elqui Chile's President

SO WHAT'S THE DECISION?

I've already answered that question
To write as the readers speak
period

BUT LET US RETURN TO LUIS OYARZUN
........... 1920-1972

He lived 52 years
......... The same as Shakespeare
16 years more than Princess Diana
40 fewer than Mother Teresa

WHAT YOU HEAR LADIES & GENTLEMEN

Oyarzún was an ecological infantryman
He didn't preach
......... He only practiced:
I never saw him driving a car

He traveled on foot through the countryside
With his backpack the color of earthquake

Even the bicycle
Seemed to him a crime contra naturam

I don't know what you folks think
As for me it really gets my attention

Nobody less like Father Gatica than he

IN SUMMARY

............. in short
In a few words:

The problems many
The solution one:

The Mapuche System of Economic Subsistence:
Everything has to be radically changed

Don't you say so . . .

RIGHT ON LUIS OYARZÚN

You gave off an ultraviolet light

LET US HAIL IN HIM THE PRECOCIOUS ARTIST

The adolescent of Plaza Brazil
The officeworker with coat & tie
The deluxe Cultural Attaché
Smartly dressed
Multilinguist
Distinguished Bookworm
The exegete of Lastarria
The founder of Universities

& it can't be said he's a bad poet
Luis Oyarzún's a great writer
A giant in a Tom Thumb disguise
Without whose antics
This gathering would not have been

It's a very great honor for me
Thanks for this prize
As meaningful as it's undeserved
So long ......... Good evening
The last time I`ll appear in public

en: revista Dirty Goat (Austin, Host Publications Inc., 1999)