El cinco de septiembre/September 5th
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| Photo from The Paris Review, January 2018. Author and translator David Unger recalls his admiration for Parra's work yet his difficulty working with him on a book of his translated poems. Click HERE. |
"I do physics in order to earn my living, and I do poetry in order to keep alive."
A Chilean poet, mathematician, and physicist whose "anti-poetry" movement was influential throughout Latin America, Parra was proposed on four occasions for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He won the prestigious Cervantes Prize in 2011 and the Pablo Neruda Ibero-American Poetry Award in 2012. Parra was one of nine children born to Nicanor Parra Sr., a schoolteacher and musician, and Rosa Clarisa Sandoval Navarrete, a dressmaker, in San Fabián de Alico, in Southern Chile. Parra's parents made sure that their children were steeped in culture, and several of Parra's siblings also became respected artists. His sister was folksinger Violetta Parra (her son told the New York Times that he wanted "nothing to do with that man" when asked about his uncle, and The Paris Review article - see link above - also mentions ill will due to Parra's "unwillingness to save his imprisoned nephew Angel, son of singer-composer Violeta Parra, after Pinochet's coup in Chile). Parra published his first book of poetry a year before graduating from the University of Chile in 1938 with a degree in mathematics and physics (he then went on to study mechanics at Brown and cosmology at Oxford). He was a long-time teacher of theoretical physics at the University of Chile. Yet he will be remembered for his poetry. Chilean President Michelle Bachelet announced his death in January, calling him "a singular voice in Western culture." Parra's survivors include six children -- Catalina, Ana Francisa and Alberto, from a relationship withAna Delia Troncoso, Roberto, from a relationship with Rosita Muñoz, and Colombina and Juan de Dios, from his marriage to Nury Tuca, a painter. See his New York Times obituary HERE.
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