The Chilean poet Nicanor Parra is one of those significant figures who appear from time to time in all literature and through a profound originality and sense of the Pound/Confucius principle of "Make It New" revitalize the poetry of their language. Just as the Imagists and William Carlos Williams rechanneled the course of American poetry, so Parra's "antipoems," with their directness of metaphor and rejection of rhetoric and "poetic" decoration, are influencing poets throughout Latin America. "Anti-poetry," Parra has said, "seeks to return poetry to its roots." The reader may judge from this collection, which is drawn from all of Parra's published books, how well he has succeeded. -- From publisher's description.