SOURCE: "Pablo Neruda and Nicanor Parra: A Study of Similarities," poesis, Vol. 6, No. 1, 1984, pp. 51-60.

In the following essay, Agosin asserts that Parra's Poems and Anti-poems influenced Pablo Neruda's Extravagaria.

Contemporary Chilean poetry represents a rich and vital lyric within Spanish American letters. A few names bear witness to this fact: Vicente Huidobro, Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda and Nicanor Parra. Furthermore. Neruda as much as Parra has exerted an influence on the Spanish American poets that have come after them. Nonetheless, contemporary criticism has rarely pointed out the marked influence that Nicanor Parra has on Pablo Neruda in his book Extravagaria, published in 1958.

We consider it important to illustrate how Pablo Neruda was spurred by Parra's Poems and Anti-poems (1954) to reevaluate his own poetry and the function of the poet as well. This study will center on observations of how Parra's anti-poetry influenced Neruda's Extravagaria. Examples in the...