Forty-One Objects - Carsten René Nielsen (The Bitter Oleander Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Forty-One Objects.  Carsten René Nielsen.  Translated by David Keplinger.  The Bitter Oleander Press.  Fayetteville, New York.  2019.

Forty-One Objects by the Danish poet Carsten René Nielsen, translated by David Keplinger, is one of those books that fills your poetry heart with pure poetry joy.  Nielsen writes poems that instantly made Today's book of poetry think of Stuart Ross's surrealist poetry.  Stuart Ross, recent winner of the 2019 Harbourfront Festival Prize, is Canada's premiere surrealist.

These poems, like Ross's, are filled to over-flowing with clever leaps of faith, secret wisdom about the inner workings of it all, genuine humour.  There is a constant flow of original thinking.  With many poets, good and the other kind, the reader often feels the lines and/or subject is one the reader already knows or expects.

Nielsen doesn't row that way.

Chalk

I tried to write on the blackboard, but the chalk left no

trace. As if the board were made out of metal, or the chalk

were a rusty nail. Not that it mattered. My students were

sitting, as my students do, silently screaming with closed

eyes, their hands pressed against their ears. So quiet it was

in the room, one could hear the insects flying against the

large windows. Were my eyes two small suns, or was the sun

shining so brightly that summer that we were all lit up from

inside? I don't know. It is you who remembers this.

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David Keplinger has done some superb work translating Carsten René Nielsen.  This past year Today's book of poetry spent considerable time and joyous effort in an attempt to translate Norway's  

Dag T. Straumsvåg but with very little success.  Clearly Keplinger has tools Today's book of poetry doesn't.  These translations sound, feel and read as though were written in English first.  Keplinger has inhabited Nielsen words until they belong to them both.  With two cooks in the kitchen things can often go wrong, not these cats, they both know how to burn.

Forty-One Objects is excellent evidence of something Today's book of poetry has long believed.  The poetry world is endless and filled with remarkable voices.  As readers we have to take our hats off to small presses like The Bitter Oleander Press for bringing great voices from other languages within hearing range.

Jewelry Box

The youngest of the sisters, the loveliest one, was given a

jewelry box. If one tried to open it, it buzzed painfully in

one's fingers, and the hair on both head and body stood up.

After several attempts in vain, the girl ended up in the dog

basket, where she lay, peeing. "Just give her a cigar," said

Uncle, "I'm longing for Chinese girls, and we have to move

on!" And on we went, in the middle of the night, onwards

on the same bicycle to the dentist. A molar was found in

an oyster, and later a silver spoon among the instruments

in a drawer. "Milk teeth," laughed the dentist incessantly,

"Milk teeth," while unsteadily he pointed at my mouth.

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Today's book of poetry is trying to get caught up on a big backlog.  Our intern Maggie has returned to the real world.  Kathryn and Milo are busy Kathryn and Miloing.  Max, our rarely seen and cranky Senior Editor, has been busy working on a personal project that seems to be coming along nicely.  The rest of us have been scraping ice off of the lane way and reading what comes in the mail.

Poets like Nielsen give Today's book of poetry optimism, hope.  Certain people just know how to burn, they are able to dance from birth.  

Glasses

Tired of listening to Tim Burton playing the guitar, Schubert

explaining how a person does his tax returns, and Joseph

Brodsky telling about his experiences as the new dogcatcher

in town, Jesus Christ - also known as "The Weasel"  - tunes

into a radio station where jazz is played. It's Mingus with

Goodbye Pork Pie Hat, at an elegy dedicated to Lester Young,

who wore such a hat. Jesus always confuses Prez with Buster

Keaton, but then again, his eyesight isn't what it used to be.

He has often thought about getting glasses but is afraid -

even with the crown of thorns - to be confused again with

John Lennon.  

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January is only half over is how Today's book of poetry was feeling when we opened Forty-One Objects.  By the time Today's book of poetry was finished Nielsen's poetry we were more of the "wow," January is already half over.  Hope goes a long way.  Today's book of poetry wants you readers to get a big slice of it.  Carsten René Nielsen is serving it up.

Just as a final note, Today's book of poetry wanted to be sure to say that Stuart Ross writes good poetry of every stripe, not just surrealist poems.  Dag T. Straumsvåg is cut out of the same general mold, excellent poems of every stripe.  And on a personal note these two men are friends with Today's book of poetry.  Their books are treasured.

Carsten René Nielsen

ABOUT THE POET

Carsten René Nielsen, born 1966, is a Danish poet and author of ten books of poetry and one book of flash fiction. His first book published in 1989 was awarded the Michael Strunge Poetry Prize. The prose poems Cirkler (Circles, 1998) won him critical acclaim throughout his native Denmark. Recent collections include the prose poems Enogfyrre dyr (Forty-One Animals, 2005), Husundersøgelser (House Inspections, 2008) and Enogfyrre ting (Forty-One Objects, 2017). He has won several fellowships from the Danish State Foundation for the Arts. In the United States two of his books in translation have been published: his selected prose poems, The World Cut Out with Crooked Scissors by New Issues in 2007, as well as the prose poems House Inspections, by BOA Editions in 2011, both books translated by David Keplinger. In 2014 a selection of Nielsen's poems was published by EDB Edizioni in Italy under the title 8 animali e 14 morti. He lives in Aarhus, the second largest city of Denmark.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

David Keplinger is the author of five books of poetry including The Prayers of Others (2006), winner of the 2007 Colorado Book Award, and The Clearing (2005), both from New Issues Poetry & Prose, as well as The Rose Inside: Poems (Truman State University Press, 1999), chosen by Mary Oliver for the T.S. Eliot Prize of that press. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He is also the author of World Cut with Crooked Scissors (New Issues, 2007), which he co-translated with Danish poet Carsten Rene Nielsen. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, Florida Review, AGNI, Nimrod, and Minnesota Review. He currently teaches at American University in Washington, D.C.

                                                                                                                               David Keplinger

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Puppets in the Wind - Karl Krolow (Translated from the German by Stuart Friebert) - The Bitter Oleander Press

Today's book of poetry:
Puppets in the wind.  Karl Krolow.  Translated by Stuart Friebert.  The Bitter Oleander Press.  Fayetteville, New York.  2014.

The German poet Karl Krolow (1915-1999) summed up his own poetry best when he said "I don't like any ballast."  Krolow lived through the worst years in European history and you can hear his stern and concise wisdom in these poems.

Karl Krolow was a highly decorated, respected and influential figure in modern German literature.
His poetry is a pared-down, plain-speaking and thoroughly contemporary.

Stuart Friebert, the translater of Puppets in the Wind, states in his introduction, well, he implies, that Krolow is that no-nonsense grandfather -- the one you can rely on to tell it straight, "to honour the weight of the everyday."

True Fall

I see on a map how
its artistic colors surface in Holstein,
then as rust spots
slowly run their course south.
A tiny lightbulb as sun
sits over the Republic.
My true fall moves
up the Rhine through Hessen
with everything that's good,
health food stores, garbage bins,
German like the weather forecast,
academic at heart.
No painter commits
suicide over it.
A forest of copper beeches
burns away along Lake Constance
in the usual colors
before the history of Impressionism
fades away.

...

As promised, these plain speaking poems are trimmed to essence.  Kark Krolow's sure voice is stripped of everything that doesn't drive the poem home.

Today's book of poetry likes to look at poetry in translation.  In our last blog we looked at the modern South Korean write Kim Hyesoon and her technicolour Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream.  Poems in translation are like a looking glass into other cultures.  Today's book of poetry has also looked at books translated from French, Cree, Spanish, Italian, Icelandic and so on.

But Karl Krolow's Puppets in the Wind is the first German book of poems we've been lucky to see come through the door.  Krolow was born during the first big war and lived through the second.  It is a difficult century and he sure lived in a difficult place, these poems are like icebergs, beautiful shiny and succinct on the surface.  Big unknown mass beneath looming and full of centuries.

Free Fall

And generally: give up.
But don't hang just yet on the clothes' hook
or the showerhead in the bath,
don't disappear around the familiar bend just yet,
even if there's nothing
more for you to do.
It's still a bit early
to show your tongue
and bob around with a stiff member.
For now you're skittish about
this sight and wait without panic
for a free fall
that won't end.

...

Today's book of poetry enjoys Krolow's simple line, his ability to keenly observe the smaller moments of our existence without guile or much complaint.

These straight forward poems celebrate clarity while exploring the universe, one moment at a time.

These poems remind me of the voice of Kurt Vonnegut.  Smart, crisp and a little annoyed at how predictably stupid human beans can be.

Old Enough

A lot of things happen everywhere
every time for the last time.
The first time's
long ago. When he's
old enough and foolish
about some things, everyone thinks
he's still got all sorts of things going,
and he lets loose a torrent
of little goodbyes.
His vocabulary lightens up.
You never forget enough
of what's over with now.
Charming folks, altogether
different sorts of humans,
can't see anything
that's missing now:
a big hunk of life,
honest love and a lot
of change in arteries
growing narrower.
An aria from the opera:
passion.
You take some liberty now,
call it hot flashes.
Only later the others say
what bad form this was.
That doesn't mean a thing.
On the other hand, cheerfulness
is considerably nicer, if it
comes along.

...

Stuart Friebert has done a remarkable job, even if I don't understand the German text, I can see that his diligent efforts speak Krolow's language.

Today's book of poetry likes that Karl Krolow's poetry "about nothing" in fact turns out to be poetry about everything.  Krolow's brings the universe down to small steps, one in front of the other.

Karl Krolow

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Karl Krolow (1915-1999) was the author of more than twenty-one volumes of poetry in his lifetime, each with a physiognomy of its own. A noted critical essayist, he always furnished an exacting commentary on four decades of international poetry. Every German prize for literature honored his name and work, yet in translation his work is barely known. Scattered over the last forty plus years, only six books of his work in translation have appeared. Michael Bullock's Foreign Bodies and Invisible Hands, two wonderful renderings, along with Herman Salinger'sPoems Against Death (all in 1969), and now this third selected edition of poems, Puppets in the Wind translated by Stuart Friebert.

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Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.

 

The Cave - Tom Holmes (The Bitter Oleander Press)

Today's book of poetry:
The Cave.  Tom Holmes.  The Bitter Oleander Press.  New York, N.Y., 2014.

Winner of the Bitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Book Award for 2013

How do you make human those first moments of transition when a species is animal and then they become human?

Is it contained in that first deliberate painting on a cave wall?

Tom Holmes might have you feeling that.  The Cave posits those moments of the transformative human past and gives them scope, room to percolate in our active and overburdened minutiae.

The First Painting

I had no urge except to sleep
with her in the cave, but I felt
sympathy, I cared. I sensed
intelligence in a crevice. I saw

life. I saw a bison's back
in a crack, I saw
the whole world, the whole sky,
all of night. The night

with the bisons, the horses, and rhinos
before me, before my eyes -- I saw
a backdrop with all the beasts.

I saw blood on my finger.
The arc of a bison's back
appeared with one stroke.
The second urge arrived.

...

Tom Holmes is explaining who we are today by stepping into our giant footprints and deciphering what it is that makes us sentient, capable of thought and therefore choice.

These big question poems pose a challenge to the readers understanding of what it means to be human.

It is all in here, The Cave, the start of faith, the beginning of manufacturing, of commerce.  Holmes is outlining or at least providing a hypothesis for nothing less than the beginning of our conscious time on this planet.

Plato is just hanging out around the corner, Holmes has his own cave and in it all is explained in time.

The First Prayer

Father, it is cold for spring,
snow lingers in shadows
below cliffs and trees,
the ground is not giving,
and the beasts smell you.

The fat and dried meats
dwindled away days ago
as did your final breath.
The fire is warming.
Forgive us our next meal.

...

Holmes assesses the future using the tools of the present.  He has discovered and/or decided to share time travel.  He is in every moment, Holmes somehow spirals through time.  The poems in The Cave
are our first revelations as we move away from the black glass monolith, bones in our hairy fists.

Sorry, Kubrick obsessed intern writing copy for a moment.

Today's book of poetry thought these poems were cut with a digital laser, precise as that.

A Brief Autobiography Of The First Artist

I was carving
the sharp end of a spear
when I sliced myself
and my blood spilled out.

It was smooth and thick
and salty.
I tried to rub it off,
it spread evenly and thin.

More pulsed out
in rhythm with my heart.
I clutched my chest.
The blood continued its pulse.

I smeared my arm
and then my thigh.
I slapped a rock.
The blood held its place.

I found a red hand
on the rock. My red hand
detached and peaceful
like a greeting or foreboding.

My blood stopped.
I sliced myself again.
I made more hands
and flung red drops from my fingertips.

There was so much red
before it all went black.

...

Tom Holmes

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tom Holmes is the editor of Redactions: Poetry, Poetics, & Prose and the author of seven collections of poetry, most recently The Cave, which won The Bitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Book Award for 2013 and will be released in 2014. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize seven times and his work has appeared a number of times on Verse Daily. His writings about wine, poetry book reviews, and poetry can be found at his blog, The Line Break: http://thelinebreak.wordpress.com/.

BLURBS

Hand art on Paleolithic cave walls is the artery, but observations like cut gemstones are woven into Tom Holmes' exciting tapestry of The Cave with its hunger for mystery to balance you along the edge: "When the wall opens, / I am lightning in the antelope's antlers / and the stripe along its jaw." These poems wrestle with the concept of time. They want to capture time, yet realize that time is elusive. So, they attempt to understand time through concrete experience, which poses its own dilemma. Even The Needle, a vehicle which hopes to stitch the fabric designed to apprehend time, is ephemeral: "Let me tell you about the needle. / It is and it is not. It points / to what will be, and what it isnt..." Undeterred, the poet continues his quest. Enjoy this exciting journey through the primordial future.
--Alan Britt, judge for the 2013 Bitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Book Award.

A deep and selfless imagination anchors The Cave. Tom Holmes gives himself over completely to his vision and his project is nothing less than inhabiting the spirit and the flesh of our collective ancestors. The speakers here, in the daily specifics of early life on earth, retell the beginnings of our consciousness as it rises from fire and rocks to images illuminated on the cave walls and in the night sky. Each poem is a distillation of the individual efforts of art that result in the common bonds of our humanity. From “blood on his finger” and “burnt wood and ash” to “where the wind took form” we retrace our physical and spiritual past in song and paint. The voices in these poems are absolutely credible, and Holmes’ writing is “a song it carries from a star.”
– Christpoher Buckley, author of Back Room at the Philosopher's Club

A writer looks at the famous Paleolithic cave paintings in France, and then he becomes an ancestor at art’s birth, birthing himself as a writer at the same time. Tom Holmes “set down [his] bowl of burning animal fat / to illuminate this hollow the world” in poems that embrace what it means to be a fledgling human and nods toward Platonic allegory in poems that delight and sometimes sear. In “An Origin of the Other” the sacred and the earthy conjoin in manifesting this human world, what we have been, what we have become and are becoming still. An ambitious and strange book of intelligence and empathy.
– Laura McCullough, author of Rigger Death & Hoist Another

Today's book of poetry cut and pasted two of those blurbs from the excellent poetry site Redactions. Which you can see here:  http://www.redactions.com/our-books.asp 

Tom Holmes

Three Bad-Ass Poets: Tom Holmes - Reads Paleolthic Poems

Video by Semlohsa Moht

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Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.