SOURCE: A review of Sermons and Homilies of the Christ of Elqui, in The Georgia Review, Vol. XXXIX, No. 5, Fall, 1985, pp. 673-74.

In the following review, Corey asserts that Parra's Sermons and Homilies of the Christ of Elqui "is far more satisfying as a whole than for its individual parts."

Sometime in the 1920's, Domingo Zarate Vega left his job as a construction worker and became an itinerant preacher in his homeland of Chile. He claimed to have had visions following the death of his mother, and in response he dedicated the rest of his life—more than twenty years—to her memory and to sharing his radical views with the poor and suppressed. For his efforts he became a folk legend and an unofficial saint, dubbed "The Christ of Elqui" by his followers.

Nicanor Parra (b. 1914), the elder statesman among contemporary Chilean poets, was moved by these...