Nicanor Parra (1914?1918)??a poet of total command and total grandeur? (The New York Times)?is the author of over twenty collections of poetry and widely regarded as one of Latin America's greatest poets. For forty years he taught theoretical physics at the Universidad de Chile, as well as other universities in the US. His work was championed by such luminaries as Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda, Allen Ginsberg, and Roberto Bolaño, who once wrote, ?Nicanor Parra over everyone else.? Nominated on many occasions for the Nobel Prize for Literature, Parra received many awards and honors, including the inaugural Juan Rulfo Prize, Chile's National Literature Prize, and Spain's prestigious Miguel de Cervantes Prize. New Directions has also published his books Poems and Antipoems (1967), Emergency Poems (1972), Antipoems: New and Selected (1985), and Antipoems: How to Look Better & Feel Great (2004).