(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Jonas Rasmussen (ed.): Nervous system – young Danish poetry. Ellerström's publisher, 2014
There is poetry that primarily moves into poetry, and there is poetry that primarily moves into the world outside of poetry. (A poetry outside the poetry does not naturally exist, just as there is no poetry completely detached from the outside world.) The division is one-eyed and the scale sliding, but it forced itself during the reading of the Swedish anthology Nervsystem, with the subtitle young Danish poetry.
Seriously. Nervsystem contains poems by 15 Danish poets who debuted between 2003 and 2013, translated into Swedish. "In my reading, I think I have seen a greater playfulness during the first half of the 00 century," writes editor Jonas Rasmussen in the foreword, "while at the beginning of the 10 century, more serious and politically or socially positioned poetry collections have come. This is also in line with the idea of 'generation ethics' [a term coined by Mikkel Frantzen in Information in 2014, the coin of several of the poets in this anthology, but rejected by the poets themselves] which I also think has been confirmed in conversations with Danish poets, reviewers, publishers and translators. ”
Rasmussen's assertion of a politicization of Danish poetry was confirmed by the Swedish reviewers. "One of the few counter-forces is the aggressiveness," Aase Berg wrote in Dagens Nyheter, "[It] is the one that is the Danes' trick throughout the anthology. Sometimes an immediate political fist, sometimes a lazy root of anger. ”A little more subdued was Hanna Nordenhök in Expressen: "Nervsystem [...] puts his finger on an aesthetic need in contemporary poetry – Danish as much as Swedish – of refusal, resistance, of poetry such as embodied criticism of, but also furious testimony to, a European reality characterized by advancing fascism, deep class divisions and racism, populism and anti-feminism. ”
If we disregard Yahya Hassan, who is of course represented, it is, however, difficult to spot political fists or furious testimonies in this book. About half of the poets represented are within a conventional lyrical paradigm, where the poet at a controllable distance from the phenomena (in most cases nature or the relationship to the beloved), sings these and / or reproduces more or less whimsical associations that the phenomena give him or her. But neither do the poets Berg and Nordenhök point out quite correspond to the descriptions.
Directionlessness. I That Winter the Wolf Came by Juliana Spahr, which I wrote about here in the newspaper last month, it is the ego's experience of having participated in a confrontation / historical event (including Occupy Oakland) that gives the book direction, and that connects the poem and the poem utters with the world around . IN Nervsystem there is no such event. The poets in the anthology who have been associated with the so-called "generation ethics" – Maja Lee Langvad, Theis Ørntoft, Amalie Smith, Julie Sten-Knudsen, Asta Olivia Nordenhof, Olga Ravn and the aforementioned Hassan – rather describe an experience of directionlessness and of being in a situation that almost perforates and dissolves the self and the body. Reading a "gestaltad critique" of "a European reality", as Hanna Nordenhök does, out of these poems, is only possible if one reads them into a historical context the poems themselves do not point to.
That said, there is a big difference in how the directionlessness and the resolution are articulated, both formally and semantically. Amalie Smith uses in the book In civil (Gyldendal, 2012) a relatively mastered and clarified language for putting and merging different language plans, among other things related to a medical history and considerations of the collection as a phenomenon, in full range:
In a closed system, entropy (the distribution of energy) will only escalate. // Counteracting proliferation, maintaining or creating order, requires energy. When energy is consumed somewhere in a closed system, the corresponding amount, or more, is spread elsewhere in the system. // The body is not a closed system. It absorbs energy and matter from the surroundings. The body is a machine that sorts and transforms matter and gives it the structure of a body. // The body consists of a superior movement that collects, and a series of subordinate movements that spread, emit heat e.g. Collection can take place at the expense of spread in a larger system (society, the biosphere) or at the expense of the body itself. A dead body is spreading.
Or Asta Olivia Nordenhof's constellations of seemingly autobiographical statements in The easy and the lonely (Basilik publishing house, 2013):
if I was just called torben and had an easier life // then I would have been completely fucked down at seveneleven // and wondered why my name was torben and that it still did not matter what my name was // completely lost and the directionlessness would be so obvious // that you went on needles that you were not a master in your own house // and that you can feel like licking an infant because it is so perfectly small // all the love you have, oh dear I have lost my mind / / if another snowflake hits me in the neck and melts down along the neck // then I fuck the hell out of me everyone I see or I start crying and never stop again // have received a greeting card from a woman named livia and turns one hundred soon // she thinks my name is livia and turned seventeen this monday, she congratulates me on all that // aunt cari auguri di buon natale it says on the card // what happiness! no one has their facts straight! everyone has their head up their ass! // everyone has tried to be so hot and then rest their thighs against some rocks that have been in the shade all day // everyone has been so wonderfully small
Or Olga Ravns I swear to myself like a heather (Gyldendal, 2012), where the poem itself appears to be attacked by forces that threaten to tear it to pieces:
How the girl talks: IN SMALL BOOKLETS. / Tableware and MATURE GRAIN. / Hello, YOUR FACE IN THE FLYING GREEN. / So often the dough wishes, / the dough in the bowl in the semi-dark kitchen, / so often the dough wishes it was GREEN CRYSTAL. / My insomnia works pop and boldness and closure. / I'm a lake for anxiety. In the dipping of anxiety. / I'm PAINTED LACE. / Dip me in pure ideas, dip me a little with white tufts of haze. / ATTACK VOLUNT. / Every time the hour works lightly, the water or it / water-like works with dipping. / Red LOUTWATER, FINGERBALL MOTHER, HYPOCHONDRI-KIWI GLASS, / WITCHPHOBIC heart shadow. / I look like you as a little dog. / Incredibly many MERINO AUTHORITIES own me in the rooms. / I loosen and tighten, mine is never hard to grasp, I have to roll. / […]
Should be translated. We are several who have argued that Swedish and Danish poetry should not be translated into Norwegian, but read in the original language – not only because Norwegian readers can easily understand the poems, but also because such a small language area as Norwegian needs the larger literary community as Swedish and Danish literature offers. I am afraid we have overestimated the infrastructural conditions of such a transnational community. Only exceptionally does a Scandinavian poetry book reach other readers in the neighboring countries than those who are particularly interested, unless they are translated and distributed in the neighboring country. Nervsystem has received massive attention in Sweden. I cross my fingers that a Norwegian publisher takes on the task of doing something similar in this country. Both Sweden and Denmark probably have good and interesting poets so that we can have similar anthologies for several years to come.
Andersen is the publisher. paalbjelke@gmail.com
