discursos aceptacion premio Juan Rulfo y dr honoris causa U.Concepcion ( )

Nicanor Parra's 'After-dinner declarations' is a fairly large book--the bilingual edition is over 500 pages. It consists of 5 long poems/orations/ speeches given at a variety of functions over the years in which for instance Parra won an award (the Juan Rulfo prize) or paid homage to a poet (his fellow Chilean Vicente Huidobro for one--Shakespeare for another) or a childhood friend Luis Oyarzun or when he recieved an honorary degree from a University. These longish poems are broken down into numerous smaller sections where Nicanor describes a variety of viewpoints about the subject matter and otherwise with his trademark and very quirky sense of humor.

The form and content most resembles his 'Sermons and homages of the the Christ of Elqui' poem--a book length poem delivered by what might at first seem like a raving (ir)religious maniac--but is actually full of common sense wisdom and pragmatic advice on how to live and let live. No doubt most people walking by this Christ take him for some kind of down and out lunatic and so have already shut their ears to what he has to say. Anyway though I really like After-dinner declarations and his Christ of Elqui--to me the form doesn't always serve his strengths the best. Over that kind of length there are just too many lulls and it comes off as uneven compared to the shorter and more focused poems that you find in some of his collections for instance--'Emergency poems' and 'Poems and anti-poems. I have to tell you IMHO nobody beats Parra when he's on his game. Nobody. Sorry--I respect other people having other favorites. He is mine. Too too funny and too too true. That sums it up for me. Yes--it can get black but his humor is always irrepressible and he takes no prisoners and he doesn't let the powerful and/or the famous off the hook.

Anyway there are moments of sublime humor in this one too. For instance on recieving the Rulfo prize he thanks the committee (Mexican) for the narco dollar prize money. He can surely use it but then goes on to say the real prize really is Rulfo's Pedro Paramo. Or in the Shakespeare dissertation we find this snippet:

W.C. PrOblEM

To P or not to P
That is the question

Association of Prostate patients

Which would be preferable I ask myself
Suffer the whims of unfortunate fate
or take arms against a sea of troubles
& by opposing end them

To die
to sleep
no more
And by a sleep to say
We end the heartaches
And the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to
The temptation couldn't be greater

To die...
To sleep...
To sleep? perhaps to dream...
Ay, there's the rub
For in that sleep of death
What dreams may come
When we have shuffl'd off this mortal coil
Must give us pause

which explains
Why this misery will never end.

So then another small segment and we'll conclude. This is his Total Zero:

Everything was reduced to nothing
And of the nothing little remains

Let us pray

The error consisted
in believing the earth was ours
When the truth of the matter is
That we belong
to
the
earth

Anyway Parra is a great poet--one by the way who is in his mid 90's and you won't find a sharper tack. He is Nobel worthy and better in my estimation than both his fellow Chilean poet Nobelists Mistral and Neruda. This might not be as good as his poetry collections but it is intelligent, coherent and often amusing enough. If you don't mind or even enjoy the idea of seeing 20th century icons skewered and barbecued this book may just be one for you. ( )

Though this volume consists of relatively lengthy "discourses," Chile's Parra is also known for his brevity, as this example from another collection illustrates:

U.S.A.

Where liberty
is a statue. ( )