Holy Books of Guttersnipe Das: Nicanor Parra

Nicanor Parra
ANTIPOEMS: How to look better & feel great

bilingual edition
antitranslation by liz werner
New Directions, 2004

Liz Werner has got to be one of the luckiest translators of all time. Living in Valparaiso while still in her twenties, she called up Chile’s famed anti-poet (then in his eighties) who told her to come right over.

Werner writes, “The house was full of sculptural artefactos, made out of handwritten signs paired with various household objects that changed the phrases or gave them second meanings. As soon as I arrived at the coast for the first time he showed me each one, and I came up with ideas for translation as we went from room to room. Some were in English already: for example the bible paired with a sign that said, “This book is not for fun.” I suggested, “This book is not for sale,” and he went to get a marker to change the sign. All this happened before I had even put my bags down.”

This same playful spirit fills the entire book. This is a bilingual edition and, because Parra often uses very simple language, even readers with a very small amount of Spanish will be able to see other possibilities for translation.

Nicanor Parra was a mathematician and physicist before he became a poet and Werner uses this to give the best explanation of “antipoetry” that I’ve found: “In 1928 a physicist named Paul Dirac came up with a mathematical equation that predicted the existence of an antiworld identical to ours but consisting of antimatter. Each antiparticle of this antiworld would exactly match each particle of our world, but would carry an opposite charge. viewed through the lens of antimatter, antipoetry mirrors poetry, not as its adversary but as its perfect complement; it is not by nature negative, but negative where poetry is positive, and vice versa; it is as opposite, complete, and interdependent as the shape left behind in the fabric where the garment has been cut out.”

The thought of trying to describe Parra’s antipoems brings immediate despair. Humor and sadness and frolic and outrage presented in a way somehow exceptionally naked. (“Presented” is already entirely the wrong word.)

My favorite antipoem is titled “Mission Accomplished” and is written in two colums, one a list of the contents of a life, one of numbers. The tally starts with

‘trees planted
children begotten
works published

sum total’

but soon moves on to:

‘regular kisses
“with tongue
“at the mirror
“luxury
“Metro Goldwyn Mayer

sum total’

and eventually gets to things like:

‘literary gems
fathers of the Church
hot air balloons

sum total’

Meanwhile, on the other side of the page, the numbers are making a poem of their own. Sometimes appearing to comply, other times going quite splendidly awry.

While I lived in Santiago, I was impressed by the great fondness Chileans feel for Parra, still very much alive aged 97. (Everyone has an acquaintance whose grandmother is Nicanor Parra’s close friend. Everyone has met one of his children recently.) Although many people couldn’t give a definition of antipoetry or an antipoet, they are certain that Nicanor Parra is genuine, the real thing. They’re right.

Guttersnipe Bookshelf: Viscount Lascano Tegui

Viscount Lascano Tegui
On Elegance While Sleeping

Idra Novey, translator
Dalkey Archive Press, 2010
(Originally published in Spanish as De la elegancia mientras se duerme, Paris, 1925)

First of all, how brilliant to declare oneself a viscount. It never occurred to me that I could simply give myself a title. Then again, Lascano Tegui also declared himself to be a dentist – quite a scary idea!

In a similar way, this book is called a novel. It is true that, after several rereadings, I began to appreciate the peculiar and unnerving way that images and obsessions appear and return, throwing out shoots and warped fruits. Still, the hints of plot, the murder at the end – these are not among the principal pleasures or satisfactions of the book.

This book will appeal to fans of Lautreamont and Poe, and above all to anyone who has read Baudelaire’s prose poems in Paris Spleen a dozen times and wished that there were more. Here are dozens of prose poems, anecdotes, contemplations and oddities, like the fragments of a surreal memoir.

There’s no shortage of gruesome details -- or marvelous black humor. Best of all, there is a tendency to now and then toss out casual insights that seem absolutely essential. This narrator may be mad but his treasure is real.

“A broken watch ticks more often than one in perfect condition. It lives more.” (72) Or: “Novelists overplay their hands when they put an end to their characters with some catastrophe – a terrible fire, a murder, what have you. They don’t trust in the asphyxiating monotony of everyday life.” (71)

I am glad to be reminded of the dangers of generalizing in brothels, as well as the fact that a book, that infamous fetish object, is simply “the vegetal pulp left behind by man”.

Dalkey Archive Press is a heroic outfit to which I am deeply grateful. (Without Dalkey: no Flann O’Brien, no Juan Goytisolo, no Harry Matthews, no Diane Williams, no Coleman Dowell!) I hope their heroics will soon include more translations of Viscount Lascano Tegui who, despite being entirely fascinating, and a friend of Picasso and Apollinaire, was out of print even in his native Argentina until the 1990s.

Fear Dines Out

I am afraid of everything but, above all, I am afraid of eating out, alone, in foreign languages. Afraid of the moment when I must push open the door and stand there as the wait staff discovers I am a hopeless moron: I have not been here before, I do not know the routine, I cannot speak, I do not understand. Do I wait to be seated? Should I just sit down? Could someone please arrange to rescue me now by helicopter?

It is the moment of evaluation that is the worst, followed by the careful pasted smile of the waitress or the flash of annoyance across the busy waiter’s face.

I have been eating out in foreign languages most of my life. Which goes to show that some things do not get better. No. The fact is, in Asia it was completely different. There was no moment of evaluation. Everyone assumed I was a moron the moment they saw me.

It’s so much easier – though certainly this was one of the things that made life in Tokyo so very odd – to earn good money and always be treated like a severely disabled child.

There’s a lot to be said for it – I realize, too late, here in Chile, where everyone must always discover afresh that I am a helpless moron who does not speak the language.

Now I will tell funny and heartwarming anecdotes about how I overcame my fears, about how you too can overcome --- . Except. Shit. I haven’t overcome anything. Ever.

So therefore I will shift, slightly, and recommend this variety of terror to travelers who wish to incorporate weight loss into their travel this season. When I left the U.S. I was about ready to resign myself to a 34 inch waist. Now all that keeps my 32 inch jeans from landing around my ankles is the long piece of string I use to cinch them around my waist.

Five weeks of anxiety and avoiding restaurants has melted 15 pounds right off of me. Other people may want to try this. If you are scared enough you can lose weight even in your (broken, fitful) sleep!

For more about this, please see my forthcoming blockbuster, The Deep Fear Diet. A hundred thousand advance copies have already been sold and I am booked for every one of the morning talk shows. Which scares the living crap out of me.

Why am I holding up my pants with string, you ask? My belt broke. If you think I am about to march into a store and demand something as difficult, as fiendishly complex, as a belt – obviously you are not paying attention.

I choose restaurants purely on the basis of terror. Wherever seems least terrifying, that’s where I go. Half empty glass fronted tourist pits most frequently. What I actually want to eat is no consequence. Of course I want to eat at the crowded humming places where all the locals go, where everyone seems to just magically know what’s on the menu.

But that’s out of the question.

Which is why I am writing these notes at Mr. Jack’s Burger Bar, despite the fact that it is phenomenally expensive and I am opposed to beef on multiple levels. In fact, I am one of those excruciating people who can tell you 25 reasons why you should NEVER eat a hamburger, for reasons ranging from the individual to the planetary, and from high philosophy to hygiene. I feel very deeply about this and would list all the reasons here and now, except that it seems bad form to do so while waiting for a half pound blue cheese bacon burger.

If only I could simply appear as a hulking, loud, ignorant Norteamericano – well, one more is hardly likely to cause a stir. The problem is that I am unable to conceal the fact that I am dreadfully, dreadfully nervous. In an Edgar Allen Poe sort of way. I am terribly nervous. And that makes other people nervous too. They want to know why I am nervous.

They fail to understand that naturally I am petrified of the petite and smiling waitress, and of the busy waiter who couldn’t care less about a thing and would be satisfied if I just jabbed my finger at the menu.

You see, Chileans, on the whole, are rather spectacularly nice. Yet I speak to them as though they all had suspicious moustaches and were holding rather spectacular swords.

Added to this absurdity (I use the word because others use it. It all seems perfectly reasonable to me.) I have now received three weeks of instruction in Spanish.

‘Received’ is a very strong word. The language was very capably taught. I was present in the room. I was conspicuously diligent. I understood what was said. I can even speak a little – if I can just take a few notes first and everyone will please wait through the stammering.

I was certain that Spanish lessons would clear up my fears. I can understand! I can speak a little! But no. My 3 weeks of Spanish are a tiny matchstick house and my fear is the vast and shaggy paw of the Abominable Snowman who, it turns out, lives in the Andes and is native to Chile.

Stomp, stomp, goes the Snowman. The terrible and enormous shaggy snowman of fear, who, absolutely everywhere I go, insists on dining out with me.

What the hell is going on?

The truth is, even in English my speaking is a little odd. (The rules of polite behavior dictate that, at this moment, you ought to appear slightly surprised.) My sentences appear amid pauses and stammering and often sound rehearsed, unnecessarily convoluted and perhaps, even, slightly unnatural.

Polite surprise.

I cannot explain except to say that, to me, language appears conspicuously important. Extraordinarily weighted and powerful and I cannot relax in its vicinity anymore than I could while holding a gun.

Here we could perhaps pause a moment to reflect in gratitude on the fact that writing is my vocation. Rather than, say, firearms.

Naturally I make mistakes continuously. As should be expected. What with this language standing over me all the time, like a looming and omnipotent waiter, who may bring what I want or who may not.

Words matter terribly. Overmuch. Like a woman so important I cannot think clearly in her presence. Like a man so beautiful.

Which is why I find television so disturbing, as it spews out non-stop careless and bossy words. Or the plantations of columnists or bad novelists, where words are bred, and penned and shorn like sheep.

This must be the problem. This thing called language. Which is a synonym for action. Which is a synonym for karma. Which is a synonym for the fact that, at every moment, every single thing is at all moments interconnected and entirely dependent upon every other thing.

I am unable to escape the feeling that absolutely everything matters. Therefore it is no surprise if I sometimes feel overwhelmed, dining out in foreign languages.

On the Proper Role of Caution

Santiago, Chile



There exist in Chile a number of forms of enjoyment that have not been freely practiced in the United States since the 1970s. These include: chain-smoking, tanning, loose halter tops, all terrain vehicles and sodas in their original unmitigated forms, including orange Fanta, which no Chilean family must ever be without.

Chileans will remind you that ordinarily they are buttoned down, clean living, los hombres sanos, but today (just today) there is a special barbecue and so there must be an enormous quantity of beer and pork, charred beyond recognition, as well as piscola and Lucky Strikes.

Please remember that this is only a barbecue, and does NOT qualify as a party. You will be corrected if you make this mistake. I am not certain what it takes to qualify as a party, but at very least there must be dancing and a visit from the police.

On Sunday afternoons my Chilean friends and I “make a picnic”. This means that we drive to mountains, to a campground, to the area designated for picnics, and sit on blankets in the dirt, smoking Pall Malls and drinking piscola, enveloped in the roar and dust of the circling all-terrain vehicles.

For years I have been under the misconception that I am an easygoing person. In fact I am spectacularly uptight. So uptight that I frequently fail to recognize what is going on.

At the start of our trip to the mountains, the beautiful girl in the backseat declared that we had to buy beer. So we stopped off and bought a six pack of Escudo, the cheap beer that is so frequently consumed here that my body now accepts it as being “just what water tastes like in Chile”.

And I thought to myself, what a shame – we haven’t a cooler and the beer will be warm by the time we get to the mountains.

See? Clueless.

The beer, of course, was for the car. We all popped our cans of Escudo, the driver too, and laughed and chatted as we swerved along the mountain roads. I did my best to enjoy the views, the laughs, and the fact that my future had been drastically simplified and there was no longer any need for long term plans because I was already drinking beer on a narrow mountain road.

Unfortunately, a panicked voice from deep within me kept interrupting the proceedings to exclaim, we are drinking beer in a car!!! This was exactly the same way that voice used to interrupt those extraordinarily friendly parties in Amsterdam by declaring, we are naked except for our boots!!!

I can’t help it. Of course I am enjoying myself very much. (I am!) I just wonder if maybe it would not be better if we could maybe please be just a little more careful.

At the picnic I sit in the cloud of dust and drink more beer and wonder if I should tell the beautiful woman with the halter top and the unruly mane of hair and lines around her eyes from the sun and Lucky Strikes, “Darling, this is the very last year it will be charming for you to play the role of the drunken girl. 36 is pretty much the limit.”

I am certain of this, just as I am sure that 37 is the limit for gay men who devote their lives to fucking around. Of course you can continue as long as you like (that is what Bangkok and Montreal are for) but after age 37 it becomes too painful to watch. That is why, age 38, I have recently become wholesome and all-knowing. You’re never too old to be a prig.

What is the proper role of caution? Could someone please write in? Because certainly it is possible to die by driving drunk on mountain roads. The warnings on packages of Lucky Strikes are real. (There are gory pictures of mouth cancer but the most common warning is of impotency and shows a shirtless man looking down at his groin, which is covered by a large thumb pointing down.) Making the Christmas rounds in Santiago I shook hands with a cordial smiling man lying on a sofa, home for the holidays from the hospital, where doctors are doing what little they can for his cirrhosis.

Yet, often an excess of caution seems worse than none at all. Despite my dissolute life, I am well-aware what perfect caution and responsibility look like: my in-laws are Protestant Republicans in Iowa. They live precisely as dictated by good sense. They have a white sofa on a white carpet, their retirements and even their deaths are already paid for, with enough money left over to hopefully assist their grandchildren to survive on a planet devastated by generations who thought that safety meant only keeping safe their arteries, immortal souls and wealth.

Good sense is desperately in need of an update. As currently formulated, danger and safety are dangerously stupid. At present, we have an option. Who would you like to poison? a) yourself. b) everyone else. c) all of the above.

At least the Chileans, with their relentless barbecues and beers passed to the backseat insist on today, that today is what matters, today, today, today. It may be that they are harm themselves more. It may be that, over all, they do less harm.

How is it possible to live so that I can have my days, until I pull my vanishing act, and leave a world where others can have their days too? The cloud of dust from the all-terrain vehicles does not disguise the fact it is a quite superlative world. The next generation would doubtless like to enjoy its picnics, halter tops and beers, even if I wish I could talk them permanently out of beef barbecue and orange Fanta.

The list of things I do not want includes: cancer or a house, a cigarette or a career, a case of the crabs, a job in advertising, another can of Escudo or Coca Cola, a white picket fence, an unblemished reputation. In particular, I find all my big opinions especially worthless.

Lord Jesus Christ, my personal savior, please put an end to whaling in Japan and meanwhile deliver me from endless days of charred meat and a house in Sun City, Arizona. I do not want a party every day (as in Santiago) or a white sofa on a white carpet (as in Iowa) and, above all, I do not want my old dead habits, the round of oatmeal, porno, weightlifting, vanity, mortal terror, moisturizer.

Long walks and great literature are still welcome, because both are continuously interrupted. It is the nature of both to consist of interruptions and wonders, of inconveniences and openings.

As for the rest, I will sit here with my rubber mallet and pop things on the head as they come up, not this, not this, not that, not that.