WRITER

Nicanor Parra

1914 - 2018

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Nicanor Segundo Parra Sandoval (5 September 1914 – 23 January 2018) was a Chilean poet and physicist. He was considered one of the most influential Chilean poets of the Spanish language in the 20th century, often compared with Pablo Neruda. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Nicanor Parra has received more than 244,276 page views. His biography is available in 37 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 34 in 2019). Nicanor Parra is the 1,917th most popular writer (down from 1,814th in 2019), the 34th most popular biography from Chile (down from 29th in 2019) and the 6th most popular Chilean Writer.

Memorability Metrics

  • 240k

    Page Views (PV)

  • 56.50

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 37

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 3.18

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 4.25

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Notable Works

Poemas y antipoemas
1954
Obra gruesa
1969
Antipoems
Translations into English, Poetry, Chilean poetry
The first major collection in almost twenty years of new work by one of Latin America's greatest poets. "Real seriousness," Nicanor Parra, the antipoet of Chile, has said, rests in "the comic." And read in that light, this newest collection of his work is very serious indeed. It is an abundant offering of his signature mocking humor, subverting received conventions and pretensions in both poetry and everyday life, public and private, ingeniously and wittily rendered into English in an antitranslation (the word is Parra's) by Liz Werner. Of the fifty-eight pieces in *Antipoems*, the first twenty-three are taken from Parra's 1985 collection, *Hojas de Parra* ("Vine Leaves" or "Leaves of Parra"), two others appeared in his *Paginas en Blanco* ("Blank Pages," 2001), while the rest come straight out of his notebooks and have never been published before, either in Spanish or English. The book itself is divided into two sections, "Antipoems" (im)proper and a selection of Parra's most recent incarnation of the antipoem, the hand-drawn images of his "Visual Artefactos." As his anti-translator Liz Werner explains in her Introduction, Parra's scientific training infuses his work. "Viewed through the lens of antimatter," she writes, "antipoetry mirrors poetry, not as its adversary but as its perfect complement."
1960
Antipoemas
Chilean poetry
1972
Poemas para combatir la calvicie
1993
Emergency Poems
Translations into English, Poetry, Chilean poetry
1972

Among WRITERS

Among writers, Nicanor Parra ranks 1,917 out of 7,302. Before him are Moschus, Eiji Tsuburaya, Surdas, Gitta Sereny, Watchman Nee, and Juhani Aho. After him are Miklós Nyiszli, Thomas Wyatt, Michel de Ghelderode, Imad ad-Din al-Isfahani, Edward Young, and Josef Lada.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1914, Nicanor Parra ranks 94. Before him are Edmund Conen, Princess Maria Francesca of Savoy, Carlos Castillo Armas, Annie Fischer, Marcos Pérez Jiménez, and Marcel Bich. After him are J. Lee Thompson, Eugene Nida, Bill Finger, Birabongse Bhanudej, Jens Otto Krag, and Edward Schillebeeckx. Among people deceased in 2018, Nicanor Parra ranks 104. Before him are Jozef Adamec, Margot Kidder, Joseph Kobzon, Alan Baker, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, and Paul Andreu. After him are Bruno Sammartino, Dennis Nilsen, Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Raymond Chow, Josep Lluís Núñez, and Irena Szewińska.

Others Born in 1914

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Others Deceased in 2018

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In Chile

Among people born in Chile, Nicanor Parra ranks 34 out of 321. Before him are Alexis Sánchez (1988), Orlando Letelier (1932), Francisco Varela (1946), Humberto Maturana (1928), Arturo Vidal (1987), and Pedro Pascal (1975). After him are Sergio Badilla Castillo (1947), Carlos Ibáñez del Campo (1877), Antonio Skármeta (1940), Arturo Alessandri (1868), Lucía Hiriart (1923), and René Schneider (1913).

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Among WRITERS In Chile

Among writers born in Chile, Nicanor Parra ranks 6. Before him are Pablo Neruda (1904), Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929), Gabriela Mistral (1889), Luis Sepúlveda (1949), and Roberto Bolaño (1953). After him are Sergio Badilla Castillo (1947), Antonio Skármeta (1940), José Donoso (1924), Vicente Huidobro (1893), Cristina Calderón (1928), and Alberto Hurtado (1901).

Chilean born Writers

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