TEST
What is an antipoet
Someone who deals in coffins and urns?
A general who's not sure of himself?
A priest who believes in nothing?
A drifter who finds everything funny
Even old age and death?
A speaker you can't trust?
A dancer at the edge of a cliff?
A narcissist who loves everyone?
A joker who goes for the jugular
And is mean just for the hell of it?
A poet who sleeps in a chair?
A modern-day alchemist?
An armchair revolutionary?
A petit-bourgeois?
A fake?
a god?
a naive person?
A peasant from Santiago, Chile?
Underline the right answer.

What is antipoetry
A tempest in a teapot?
A spot of snow on a rock?
A tray piled high with human shit
As Father Salvatierra believes?
A mirror that doesn't lie?
A slap in the face
Of the president of the Writers' Society?
(God save his soul)
A warning to young poets?
A jet-propelled coffin?
A coffin in centrifugal orbit?
A coffin run on kerosene?
A funeral parlor without a corpse?
Put an X
Next to the right answer.

 

Note: An early critic of Parra's writings, Father Salvatierra said that his poetry was "too filthy to be immoral."

 

translated by David Unger
traducido por David Unger

 

en: Antipoems: New and Selected (edited by David Unger), New York, New Directions, 1985.

 

 
SISIB - Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades - Universidad de Chile