What about shooting the "Anti-Poet" on sight ? Or better still: Crucify the the Poet who engendered the Anti-Poet...and mug and castrate the guy who translated the Anti-Poet's Poem for not knowing what either was or could be...
"The Test" by Nicanor Parra: Translated by T Wignesan
What’s an antipoet:
a trader in urns and coffins ?
a priest who does not believe in anything ?
a general who entertains doubts about himself ?
a vagabond who laughs at every thing
...until old age overtakes him unto death ?
an interlocuter of bad faith in a dialogue ?
a woman who dances at the brink of an abyss ?
a narcissist who loves everybody ?
a bloody humourist deliberately miserable ?
a poet who dozes off in a chair ?
...a modern-day alchemist ?
......a pocket revolutionary ?
.........a small-time bourgeois ?
............a charlatan ?
................a god ?
..................an innocent ?
a peasant of Santiago de Chile ?
Underline the sentence you consider correct.
................What is antipoetry:
............a storm in a tea cup ?
........a sleeve of snow robed round a rock ?
......a shallow tray full of human excreta
.........as Father Save-the-Earth believes ?
.............a mirror that tells the truth ?
...............a big slap on the face
.......of the President of the Society of Authors ?
..........( May God preserve him in his Holy Kingdom )
...............a warning to younger poets ?
.................a coffin in river rapids ?
........a coffin of centrifugal force ?
........a coffin of paraffin gas ?
........a burning chapel without a corpse ?
............Mark with a cross
.....the definition you consider correct.
Like you, Ron, Nicanor Parra first struggled to get an education: won a scholarship to do engineering at the University of Chile. True, it's rather frustrating not to know what the devil all the hullaballoo is about over anti-poetry and the anti-poet, etc. You know, too, he was a professor of physics and mathematics for some forty years after studying at Brown University (physics) and Oxford University (cosmology). Now, think of "matter" and "anti-matter", and associate the two with poetry - as simple as that ! But, there are further conclusions to be drawn from anti-poetic texts and "artefactos" (drawings and pithy axiom-like sayings as commentary):
"anti-poetry" doesn't annihilate "poetry" when they "collide"; rather it should serve to enhance and complement "poetry". (Don't ask me what "poetry" is supposed to do to "anti-poetry", though !) At best - and most likely - "anti-poetry" serves to tease, mock and ridicule the staid practitioners of straight-jacketed traditional stuff, and hence to assume the satirical role in jolting upstanding poets of all traditions working within given conventions and well-grounded practices, those - one might say - who fear to stray from the usual and beaten paths in the use of tropes and schemes, etc. You are not wrong in registering your astonishment, though ! All forms of artistic endeavour always arrive at junctures where some form of "gimmickry" serve as "contrepois" for further explorations: some fruitful, some end in cul de sac... Witness Salvador Dali and his sheer good-fun antics ! Don't despair as yet ! Every good wish. Wignesan.
This collection of poetry addresses the nature of time, reflections on the natural world, the difficulty of loss,
contemporary social issues and gratitude for life.
Under Amber Skies, written by author and poet Jill Eisnaugle, is a wonderful collection of rhyming poetry guaranteed to please every reader. In this, her second book, she writes of new friendships kindled, as well as old friendships solidified. She g
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"anti-poetry" doesn't annihilate "poetry" when they "collide"; rather it should serve to enhance and complement "poetry". (Don't ask me what "poetry" is supposed to do to "anti-poetry", though !) At best - and most likely - "anti-poetry" serves to tease, mock and ridicule the staid practitioners of straight-jacketed traditional stuff, and hence to assume the satirical role in jolting upstanding poets of all traditions working within given conventions and well-grounded practices, those - one might say - who fear to stray from the usual and beaten paths in the use of tropes and schemes, etc. You are not wrong in registering your astonishment, though ! All forms of artistic endeavour always arrive at junctures where some form of "gimmickry" serve as "contrepois" for further explorations: some fruitful, some end in cul de sac... Witness Salvador Dali and his sheer good-fun antics ! Don't despair as yet ! Every good wish. Wignesan.
Ron