(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Terje Dragseth. I write the language. Cappelen Dam, 2015 (0609)
"In the beginning was the Word / The Word was with God / and the Word was God." The punishments of Genesis could have been the title of Terje Dragseth's new long poem. He has chosen "I write the language". The poem is a lament and a whale song, a song of victory in the Iliad style: A journey in time and space, from the Bible via Ulysses to Stein Mehren, from the cradle of civilization to another cradle of civilization, and from cradle to grave. It is an ambitious work. Dragseth writes the history of writing, and his own story. The personal story is mirrored in world history. The individual's history is underpinned by the collective history, and the other way around. It is a literal poem, a poem that must be read on this premise: The printer may be a word snob, but not particularly textual. Many words are included for sound reasons. The reader can advantageously focus on a particular attitude, one of brass or meditation. The words "I write" is the recurring theme around which the composition varies, is the enervating melody line that continues through the centuries and all the world's religious spaces. But also eventually the potentially thirsty trance song that rolls and goes on MP1's a-list, the one you get on your brain, which haunts you at night, in dreams. For here is a level for the conscious, rational – and another for the moods, the music. Rational and the irrational often meet in the poem. The glory of the poem is between the hypersivilized and beloved, and the almost furious and disturbingly unpredictable. Pictures from I Write are kind of tight and formal in front of you. But when you're not obese, they get up and move on, backwards and out of consciousness:
I write the language of the creek at the transformer station / the rusty pipe in the creek and the tree cane that has intersected / The fishing water creek Lillebekk and the Cold water creek / which meet in Straisbekken // I write and the language of the ice that has shaped the valley / over the years orthographic language // I writes the language of the lung fibers / the heart's tissues the tracheal hairs / the calf's conversation with the heart / writes the ribs and the skeleton's erection / writes the organs' language in hunger and satiety / writes the curved / ballerina // Qi / writes / Qi / writes movement writes medicine / backwards a tray / i write, writes Dragseth, and lets the claims "I write the language", "writes the ribs" and so on, meet the scripture that acts, not just states, like the word "Qi", in another verse "Ohm": these words that are messed up, which heels. The performative, the trader, is like air and water. Together they are singing.
Terje Dragseth, Triztán Vindtorn, Gro Dahle, Cecilie Løveid, Øivind Haanes, Erlend O. Nødtvedt, Ellen Einan, Stein Mehren; those who sing poems and tell songs.
Inner space, outer time. I write the language is Dragseth's 18th collection of poems. Since his debut in 1980 he has written poetry for children and adults, produced 18 films and CDs with poetry and music. Readers like Henning Hagerup saw the quality of Dragseth's "sad, elegant and ecstatic hymns" as early as 1995. But the breakthrough came with Bella Blu: Space Manual (2012), which was important for Dragseth being the first poet to receive Triztán Vindtorn's poetry prize. Bella Blu was just as ambitious as the title promises. A handbook for the infinite great, for love, art, language. The space travel is the ultimate escape from the grief of love. Seeking solace in the beauty of poetry, the aesthetics of the aesthetic. Beautiful Blue was physically great, but not a word too long. Here was not a detail, a verse to "take" Dragseth for. This year's book has some of the same level of ambition, although smaller in size. But this is also part of the book's quality: Dragseth does not try to repeat the success. While Beautiful Blue stretched especially in space and physicality, stretching I write the language out in time. A writer is seeking writing. The printer seeks its place in the world throughout history. He alternates on the history of writing. From papyrus rolls to Snorre, to John's Revelation and Ireland, England – you name it. He tells stories long told, about story and language. Still, it's original. And so, being original is also part of something:
What tradition? Terje Dragseth is not into any tradition. He is of the unique, some call it brilliant. Dragseth's school is Those who are not like anyone else. Do they still resemble each other? Terje Dragseth, Triztán Vindtorn, Gro Dahle, Cecilie Løveid, Øivind Haanes, Erlend O. Nødtvedt, Ellen Einan, Stein Mehren; those who sing poems and tell songs. They have a look for the concrete and the visual, but choose the words as the main instrument and material. This reader thinks they are there, these friends, in the corners and rooms of I write the language. But Dragseth chooses to name them anyway. He is knowledgeable – but wisest is the text when it is wiser than the author. Single words stand and quiver and rays. "Sun". The first word I learned to read and write. "I see the sun." "Eli looks sunny." I am devoted to childhood exploration of scripture: I write the language of the inhuman / that which bursts and bleeds / that the blood and the wound hide in the shadow of a wall / and only one language: the language of harm / the language of dialectics and resistance that mobilize in municipalities and villages / the language of injustice and the language of powerlessness / I write / with letters of sun
Another distraction: irritation! And not so little jealousy. I have to share the printer with so many. There is always someone or something around him.
A critical note. Also wise is the bureaucratic language when criticizing the bureaucracy: the language that mobilizes in municipalities and villages / the language of injustice and powerlessness. Then the bureaucratic language claims resentment. This word "resentment" is as if pushed out on a stage, stiff and silent, with an undramatic drama script in hand. Words such as "burst and bleed", "bloody and wounded" are added, but become the outer spot. Harm is not the word "resentment". Harmen is not only writing, but also reading: Harmen is in reading Kvitek crow's song from perm to perm, at the Audiaetur festival in 2005: Dragseth reads on even though the minutes, the hours pass; audience members go, but Dragseth continues, bravely, as a monk, a marathon runner, as a participant in the Tour de France. I write the language are songs of different tempo and temperament, depending on what is being sung. If it sings about shopping malls and commercialism, it goes in "neon-flashing swinging like bananas". Aggression on amphetamines; more harmoniously where children and daughters figure. «Writings sing in chorus. [...] Songs without words. Molly, the young lyric boy [...] Songs that went to the heart (melodic). The Poor's Way to Wealth (parsimonious), "writes Joyce, in passages to which Dragseth hints, and which I feel I must look up, read again, for the full benefit of I write the language. The many references stop the flow, the rhythm, the music, and hinder concentration. Another distraction: irritation! And not so little jealousy. I have to share the printer with so many. There is always someone or something around him. I miss the printer myself, alone: want a moment with the text, alone, without these thousand other works. Uncertainty: Isn't this reader (I) good enough for the text? How intense does one have to be to match – I have to write a marathon, write one that runs and runs, that finds the rhythm and calm; the balance in the back / the one that makes it possible to run as forever, run as recreation / as meditation, zen, qigong. // I (the reader) write the marathon runner, the bipedal (ie homo sapiens) whose lungs are stretched out / if the stamina is large (one that stretches the boundaries / but extends. May I (the reader) write the constructive nature of the meditation; constructions of power built by / marathon on marathon I write the runner, an ace / in his ace, at his best age and body: Fulfilling all his potential / before he hits, hits a car, sits with unstoppable, almost explosive power, and takes it out in writing: Writing a marathon, writing life, writing love, the sea, death, language Why? Yes, why all this writing? The printer writes a turning point on page 75, where someone crosses the street, where the hunt writes the one who reads this // I write: / the evil ignites in a room not far from here / between two or three the evil is conspired // a lie is transformed into unity / spreads to more than three
Language. Climate, politics, conspiracy, evil and terror, the religions, and the potential for beauty. My God, who I would love to receive answers to and explanations of these major themes. But to what degree goes I write the language under my skin? "I write rhetorical razor blades," I read. What cuts into me is the sympathy with the one (in this case the words) that is on display: blunt, action-paralyzed. "Show, don't tell!" it is said, in the streets that Dragseth sings in his poem: Storgata i Bø, frequented by writer students and writing teachers at all times. It is often prose writers who are advised to show, not tell. But this reader wants it to a greater extent applied to the language itself, i I write the language. More of the acting language! I'm not just thinking of a word like "qi". I do not think of verbs, in the present, in the so-called active language. A reply can act. Like when you babble a wall around you and I ask "What's her name?". I read, "God's love in everything, I write." I know the love when the lyrics sing.
Mette Karlsvik is an author and literary critic in Ny Tid
mette.karlsvik@gmail.com
