Emergency Poems

by Nicanor Parra

Emergency Poems is the Chilean poet Nicanor Parra’s second bilingual collection published by New Directions. The spare, often grim irony of the first Poems and Antipoems (1967)—a wide selection gleaned from his four earliest books—established his reputation with a North American reading public used to the more formal language of conventional Spanish-speaking poets. Since then he has traveled extensively in this country, teaching, lecturing, and reading from his own work; while in Chile he received the 1969 Premio Nacional de Literatura (National Literature Prize) for his Obra Gruesa, from which many of the pieces in Emergency Poems are drawn. In his introduction to this latest collection, Miller Williams, the translator, comments that Parra’s “poetry has moved and expanded as the imagination behind it has since the publication of Poems and Antipoems. Those who are familiar with Parra’s work will find the humor more sharply honed and darker, the anger closer to the surface and sometimes breaking through, the language tighter, the compassion deeper and the statements more political—or anyway more social.”

Genres: Poetry, Spanish Literature

154 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Nicanor Segundo Parra Sandoval was a Chilean poet and physicist. He was considered one of the most influential poets in the Spanish language of the 20th century, often compared with Pablo Neruda.

Reviews

[Glenn Russell]

Here's a batch of anti-poems from the #1 anti-poet - Nicanor Parra (1914-2018) from Chile. I've also included my own anti-comments.

MODERN MAN

has fallen into a trap
he has only seven roads left
and none of them leads to Rome

-------------------- Sounds like Nicanor just returned from a suburban mall packed with busy shoppers or spent hours in bumper to bumper traffic or sat through a speech or you name it - chances are whatever you name is ugly as hell.


I'M NOT A SENTIMENTAL OLD MAN

a baby leaves me absolutely cold
I wouldn't take a baby in my arms
even if the world were caving in
every man scratches his own itch
I can't stand a family get-together
I'd rather be stuck in the eye with a sharp stick
than play with my nephews
my grandchildren don't move me very much either
what I mean is they set my nerves on edge
the second they see me come back from the coast
they come running at me with open arms
as if I were Santa Claus
little sons of bitches!
who the hell do they imagine I am

------------------- I wonder if Nicanor ever attended a high school reunion, sang Christmas Carols, visited Disneyland, was a member of a bowling league, danced the twist?


SOMEBODY BEHIND ME

reads every world I write
looking over my left shoulder
he laughs at my problems with no shame
a man with a swagger stick and tails

I look but there's nobody there
still I know someone is watching me

-------------------- Feeling paranoid, Nicanor? Maybe if I was living during a time when secret police and death squads routinely rounded people up to be tortured or shot, I'd be looking over my shoulder too.


WHAT TIME IS IT

When a gravely ill man
comes around for a few seconds
And asks his relatives what time is it
--Gathered as if by magic
Around the deathbed --
In a voice that sets their hair on end

It means something is wrong
It means something is wrong
It means something is wrong

----------------- Can you imagine a dying man's last words: "What time is it?" Such a question signals something is most surely wrong with society. Those last words are right up there with: "Who won the ball game?" or "Where's my wallet?"


HELP!

I don't know how I got here:

I was running along happy as you please
My hat in my right hand
Chasing a phosphorescent butterfly
Who drove me crazy with joy

And suddenly zap! I tripped
I don't know what's happened to the garden
The whole thing went to pieces
My nose and my mouth are bleeding.

Honestly I don't know what's going on
Either give me some help
Or a bullet in the head.

---------------- Nicanor was enjoying life out in nature when he was pushed through his culture's meat grinder. No doubt he needs help, lots of help. If help is not forthcoming, there's always a gun handy courtesy of the right to bear arms.



IT'S CRYSTAL CLEAR

that I shouldn't come to the U.S.
--I'm not about to buy that crap--
ok then for the same reason
we ought to break relations with France
with Peru--with Bolivia--with Luxembourg

I shouldn't ever set foot outside of Chile
but who'd get fat on that.

------------------ Exactly right, Nicanor. No man, especially an anti-poet, is ever a hero in his own country.


WELL THEN

don't be confused
if you see me in two cities
at once

hearing mass in a chapel of the Kremlin
or eating a hot dog
in a New York airport

I'm the same person both places
although it seems absurd I'm the same person

--------------- Seems, Nicanor? It is absurd! When in your 103 years on this planet wasn't it all absurd?

[Daisy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Grumpy old man writes some poetry. He is not as great as Keats nor as bad as Sandra Bond in the Derby local newspaper. Most are observations, not overly profound; some mildly amusing but none leave an impression that lingers after you have closed the book.

My personal favourite was his poem Sigmund Freud ,

We see a god nailed to a cross
A crucifix is a phallic symbol
We buy a map of Argentina
To study the border problem
All of Argentina is a phallic symbol
We are invited to People’s China
Mao Tse-tung is a phallic symbol
To normalise the situation
We have to spend a night in Moscow
The passport is a phallic symbol
Red square is a phallic symbol.

The poem continues in this vein but I had to laugh at the image of Chairman Mao’s head atop a Mandarin collar as a phallic symbol and concede that Freud might have had a point.

[Peycho Kanev · Rating 4 out of 5]

THE SITUATION IS GETTING DELICATE

You only have to look at the sun
through a smoked glass
to know things are bad:
or maybe you think everything is fine.
I say we ought to go back
to cars pulled by horses
to steam-driven planes
to TV sets cut from stone.
The old folks were right:
We have to go back and cook with wood again.

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ironic, ardent.

Bilingual edition.

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

με τη διαδικασία του κατεπείγοντος η αντιποίηση του Parra ή όπως λέει ο ίδιος στο μανιφέστο του η ποίηση της δημόσιας πλατείας, της κοινωνικής διαμαρτυρίας, ποίηση βασισμένη όχι στην επανάσταση των λέξεων αλλά των ιδεών. Και ίσως αυτός να είναι τελικά, ο ορισμός της ποίησης κυρία μου.

[Richard Cho · Rating 5 out of 5]

Parra and Pessoa,

Two of my all time favorite poets...

[Danah · Rating 5 out of 5]

SO GOOD

[Griffin Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sea lo que la ciencia determine.

Me da sueño leer mis poesías
Y sin embargo fueron escritas con sangre.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

SIGMUND FREUD
Bird with a mouthful of feathers!
Who can bear psychiatrists anymore?
They relate everything to sex.

The most astonishing claims
Are found in Freud's works.

According to this gentleman
All tapered objects
--Fountain pens, pistols, blunderbusses,
Pencils, water pipes, dumbbels--
Symbolize the masculine sex;
All circular objects
Symbolize the feminine sex.

But psychiatry goes even further:
Not only cones and cylinders
Almost all geometric figures
Symbolize sexual equipment
The Pyramids of Egypt for example.

But that's not all
Our hero goes further than this:
When we see artifacts
We see, let's say, lamps or tables
The psychiatrist sees penises and vaginas.

Let's analyze a concrete case:
A neuropath is going down the street
All of a sudden he turns his head
Something attracts his attention
--A birch tree, a pair of striped trousers
Some object flying through the air--
In the nomenclature of psychiatry
This is to say
The sex life of the patient
Is in a hell of a mess.

We see a car
A car is a phallic symbol
We see a building going up
A building is a phallic symbol
We are invited to go bicycle riding
The bicycle is a phallic symbol
We go by chance to a graveyard
The graveyard is a phallic symbol
We see a mausoleum
A mausoleum is a phallic symbol.

We see a god nailed to a cross
A crucifix is a phallic symbol
We buy a map of Argentina
To study the border problem
All of Argentina is a phallic symbol
We are invited to the People's China
Mao Tse-tung is a phallic symbol
To normalize the situation
We have to spend a night in Moscow
The passport is a phallic symbol
Red Square is a phallic symbol.

The plane spurts fire out of its mouth.

We eat bread and butter
Butter is a phallic symbol
We rest a while in a garden
The butterfly is a phallic symbol
The telescope is a phallic symbol
The baby bottle is a phallic symbol.

In a separate chapter
We find the allusion to the vulva
Decorum prevents us from talking about that
When the comparison is not to an owl
Which stands for wisdom
The comparison is always to toads or to frogs.

In the airport at Peking
It's hotter than ten thousand demons
They are waiting for us with flowers and refreshments
Since reaching the age of reason
I had never seen such beautiful flowers
Since the world was a world
I had never seen such friendly people
Since the planet was a planet
I had never seen such happy people.

Not since I was thrown out
Of the Garden of Eden.

But back to the poem.

Strange as it might seem
The psychiatrist was right
As he starts into a tunnel
The artist becomes delirious.
To begin with he's taken to a factory
There is where madness begins.

The principal symptom:
He relates everything to the act
He can't tell the sun from the moon
He relates everything to the act
Pistons are sex organs
Cylinders are sex organs
Turntables are sex organs
Crankshafts are sex organs
Blast furnaces are sex organs
Nuts and bolts are sex organs
Locomotives are sex organs
Ocean liners are sex organs.

There's no way out of the maze.

The West is a great pyramid
That ends and begins with a psychiatrist:
The pyramid is starting to crumble.

[jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

inflation

bread goes up so bread goes up again
rents go up
this brings an instant doubling of all rents
the cost of clothes goes up again.
inexorably
we're caught in a vicious circle.
in the cage there is food.
not much, there is food.
outside are only great stretches of freedom.

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Warnings


No praying allowed, no sneezing.
No spitting, eulogizing, kneeling
Worshipping, howling, expectorating.


No sleeping permitted in this precinct
No inoculating, talking, excommunicating
Harmonizing, escaping, catching.

Running is absolutely forbidden.

No smoking. No fucking.

* * *

The Situation is Getting Delicate


You only have to look at the sun
through a smoked glass
to know things are bad:
or maybe you think everything is fine.

I say we ought to go back
to cars pulled by horses
to steam-driven planes
to TV sets cut from stone.

The old folks were right:
We have to go back and cook with wood again.

* * *

Help!


I don't know how I got here:

I was running along happy as you please
My hat in my right hand
Chasing a phosphorescent butterfly
Who drove me crazy with joy

And suddenly zap! I tripped
I don't know what's happened to the garden
The whole thing went to pieces
My nose and my mouth a bleeding.

Honestly I don't know what's going on
Either give me some help
Or a bullet in the head.

* * *

Sentences


Let's not fool ourselves
The automobile is a wheelchair
A lion is made of lambs
Poets have no biographies
Death is a collective habit
Children are born to be happy
Reality has a tendency to fade away
Fucking is a diabolical act
God is a good friend of the poor

* * *

Well Then


don't be confused
if you see me in two cities
at once

hearing mass in a chapel of the Kremlin
or eating a hot dog
in a New York airport

I'm the same person both places
although it seems absurd I'm the same person.

* * *

I Don't Believe in the Peaceful Way


I don't believe in the violent way
I'd like to believe
in something - but I don't
to believe means to believe in God
all I can do is
shrug my shoulders
forgive me for being blunt
I don't even believe in the Milky Way.

* * *

They Were Just the Way They Were


they worshipped the moon - but not much
they made wooden baskets
they had no idea of music
they fucked standing up
they buried their dead standing up
they were just the way they were

* * *

These Idyllic Lovers


could be two ants
two eye in the same face
two nostrils in the same nose

these motherfucking lovers
could be the sea the way they go up and down
could be the sun if those were sun spots.

* * *

As Marcuse Says


students have their heads on backward
today they hijacked an airplane to Cuba
tomorrow they'll hold up a supermarket
- under the pretext of collecting money for the cause -
the day after that they'll kidnap a diplomat
why don't they kidnap the she-dog that whelped them all!

no one can say they don't have the stage for now
but cunning will overpower force
this is what I've been telling you
the old and worn-out welded into one
will make the young iconoclastic lords see blue elephants.

* * *

Modern Times


These are calamitous times we're living through
you can't speak without committing a contradiction
or keep quiet without complicity with the Pentagon.
Everyone knows there's no alternative possible
all roads lead to Cuba
but the air is dirty
breathing is a futile act.
The enemy says
the country is to blame
as if countries were men.
Accursed clouds circle accursed volcanoes
accursed embarkations launch crumble on accursed birds:
it was all polluted to begin with.

* * *

So You Can See I Don't Carry a Grudge

I give you the moon
Seriously - don't think I'm making fun of you:
I present it to you with the very deepest affection:
I'm not trying to pull anything!
you can go pick it up yourself
your uncle who loves you
your many-coloured butterfly
Coming to you directly from the holy sepulcher.

* * *

Somebody Behind Me


reads every word I write
looking over my left shoulder
he laughs at my problems with no shame
a man with a swagger stick and tails

I look bu there's nobody there
still I know someone is watching me

* * *

Modern Man


has fallen into a trap
he has only seven road left
and none of them leads to Rome

[Fangtooth · Rating 5 out of 5]

My poet

[Soso Chauchidze · Rating 4 out of 5]

I admit, he convinced me, cars really are wheelchairs of a peculiar kind!

[Atticus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yes...there's poetry in everything.
Really.

[visente acevedo · Rating 3 out of 5]

MOMAZOS NICANOR PARRA.

[صفاء · Rating 3 out of 5]

لم أتعرف على الشاعر نيكانور بارا إلا بعد وفاته في شهر يناير من هذه السنة عن عمر يناهز المائة، وأعجبني حقا شعره وأسلوبه الفوضوي الساخر، المضاد للوقار والجدية والنازع لقداسة الشعر، وقد انسلخ من النموذج النيرودي، ليصبح الشاعر المضاد.

https://m7raby.wordpress.com/2018/12/...


فهو يرى أن للشاعر المضاد الحق في أن يقول كل شيء: “اكتب كما تشاء، بأي نمط تريد، سال الكثير من الدم تحت الجسر، من أجل ألا تستمر في الاعتقاد، بأن طريقًا واحدًا فقط هو الصحيح. كل شيء مسموح به في الشعر. وباتباع هذا الشرط فقط بالطبع، ستتمكن من تغيير الصفحة الفارغة“.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you local library! Bright, shiny, simple, subversive poetry, very funny and irreverent, apocalyptic and prosaic:

Laughing like crazy
the child goes back to the city
gives birth to monsters
creates earthquakes
hairy women run naked
old folks who look like fetuses laugh and smoke.

[Acton · Rating 4 out of 5]

"What the hell am I writing for?
I write to make you love and respect me
To satisfy God and the devil
To record everything."

Telegrams
by Nicanor Parra

[Nikos Vlachakis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Παρόλο που τα χώνει άσχημα (και άδικα) στο Neruda, ο Parra γράφει εξαιρετική ποίηση. Τον συγχωρώ.