A harrowing meditation on tyranny, torture, and freedom by one of Chilé's most celebrated contemporary poets.
Raúl Zurita’s INRI is a visionary response to the atrocities committed under the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. In this deeply moving elegy for the dead, the whole of Chile, with its snow-covered cordilleras and fields of wildflowers, its empty spaces and the sparkling sea beyond, is simultaneously transformed into the grave of its lost children and their living and risen body. Zurita’s incantatory, unapologetically political work is one of the great prophetic poems of our new century.
“Zurita creates a wonderful body of work that marks a point of no return for the poetics of the previous generation and for which he stands out among his generation....” —Roberto Bolaño
“In brutal opposition to the pouring of libations into the earth for future good harvests, Pinochet’s regime harvests humans and dumps them into the holes of the earth: the oceans and volcanoes. These deaths cannot be understood and this poem is not for understanding. Zurita’s INRI asks without asking: what forms may avenge our avalanche of unjust deaths.” —Helen Dimos
"These poems arise into the English language as spirits of dissidence attesting to fascist violence whilst daring beauty.” —Verity Spott
Raúl Zurita (b. 1950) was born in Santiago de Chile. In 1973 he was arrested by the Pinochet regime and imprisoned in the hold of a ship. He was a founder of the group Colectivo Acciones de Arte (CADA), which undertook extremely risky public-art actions against the regime. In 1982 five airplanes wrote his poem “La Vida Nueva” in the sky above New York City, and in 1993 he had the phrase “NEITHER PAIN NOR FEAR” bulldozed into the Atacama Desert in a permanent, two-mile-long installation, visible only from above. Zurita received the Chilean National Prize for Literature in 2000 and the Asan Memorial World Poetry Prize in 2018.
William Rowe’s Collected Poems were published in 2016 by Crater Press. He has translated a number of Latin American poets, including Rodolfo Hinostroza, Juan L. Ortiz, Hugo Gola, Magdalena Chocano, Néstor Perlongher, and Mario Montalbetti. Three Lyric Poets, his study of Lee Harwood, Chris Torrance, and Barry MacSweeney, was published in 2009.
Norma Cole is a poet, painter, and translator. Her most recent books of poetry include Fate News, Actualities, Where Shadows Will, and Win These Posters and Other Unrelated Prizes Inside. Her translations from French include Danielle Collobert’s It Then, the anthology Crosscut Universe: Writing on Writing from France, and Jean Daive’s White Decimal. Cole lives and works in San Francisco.
A harrowing meditation on tyranny, torture, and freedom by one of Chilé's most celebrated contemporary poets.
Raúl Zurita’s INRI is a visionary response to the atrocities committed under the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. In this deeply moving elegy for the dead, the whole of Chile, with its snow-covered cordilleras and fields of wildflowers, its empty spaces and the sparkling sea beyond, is simultaneously transformed into the grave of its lost children and their living and risen body. Zurita’s incantatory, unapologetically political work is one of the great prophetic poems of our new century.
Praise
“Zurita creates a wonderful body of work that marks a point of no return for the poetics of the previous generation and for which he stands out among his generation....” —Roberto Bolaño
“In brutal opposition to the pouring of libations into the earth for future good harvests, Pinochet’s regime harvests humans and dumps them into the holes of the earth: the oceans and volcanoes. These deaths cannot be understood and this poem is not for understanding. Zurita’s INRI asks without asking: what forms may avenge our avalanche of unjust deaths.” —Helen Dimos
"These poems arise into the English language as spirits of dissidence attesting to fascist violence whilst daring beauty.” —Verity Spott
Author
Raúl Zurita (b. 1950) was born in Santiago de Chile. In 1973 he was arrested by the Pinochet regime and imprisoned in the hold of a ship. He was a founder of the group Colectivo Acciones de Arte (CADA), which undertook extremely risky public-art actions against the regime. In 1982 five airplanes wrote his poem “La Vida Nueva” in the sky above New York City, and in 1993 he had the phrase “NEITHER PAIN NOR FEAR” bulldozed into the Atacama Desert in a permanent, two-mile-long installation, visible only from above. Zurita received the Chilean National Prize for Literature in 2000 and the Asan Memorial World Poetry Prize in 2018.
William Rowe’s Collected Poems were published in 2016 by Crater Press. He has translated a number of Latin American poets, including Rodolfo Hinostroza, Juan L. Ortiz, Hugo Gola, Magdalena Chocano, Néstor Perlongher, and Mario Montalbetti. Three Lyric Poets, his study of Lee Harwood, Chris Torrance, and Barry MacSweeney, was published in 2009.
Norma Cole is a poet, painter, and translator. Her most recent books of poetry include Fate News, Actualities, Where Shadows Will, and Win These Posters and Other Unrelated Prizes Inside. Her translations from French include Danielle Collobert’s It Then, the anthology Crosscut Universe: Writing on Writing from France, and Jean Daive’s White Decimal. Cole lives and works in San Francisco.
