Øyvind Berg

On the way to a reading on Wednesday night, I stopped by the Grolier and picked up a book by the Norwegian poet Øyvind Berg. I'd never heard of him, but he was in the Scandinavian section where I was looking for Tranströmer. I'd say he's not well known, not just because I hadn't heard of him. Rather, it seems the only wikipedia entry for him is in Norwegian.

They are strange, short poems that grab you and confuse you. I don't usually buy a book on the first pass, but I was afraid somebody else might buy it before I had time to figure out what I was seeing. Here are three examples:

(Déjeuner sur l'h

Where skeletons grow white as trees
and the flesh migrates north
like birds in the dawn light

to visit the curse upon the house
and hatch out more chalk. A delight
for us who love the song of the flesh.

And when it's dark and dire up north
we drink white milk and remember
how unseemly things really are.

(Eternity's bowel

There's no talk of occupation. As I walked along nights at length, all I was shown was an unfamiliar brutal depopulation. Nothing else was mentioned.

(What the minister said

Take a stillborn child.
Slit it, trim of slices of fat
and stuff them in the kid's mouth.

If it's now able to speak freely
it's not a dead child

but a future minister.

Such is the magic of politics.

The surrealist strain is evident. The first poem contains elements of death and seasonal change, and seems to be a song of the accursed taking delight in curses. While I can't pinpoint a precise meaning, I think it's the whole mood we should look at. What's the meaning of a soup, after all. The second poems speaks to all who've ever wandered at night, but also to all who've ever wandered an landscape abandoned for other reasons. The last is one of my favorites, and the most jarring. Babies getting sliced is disgusting, but how much more so than what politicians do? I supposed I'm reading the last two poems through the lens of our current wars, but how can one not do so?

It's a slim book called Totschweigetaktiken, which is German for "tactics to silence the dead". I recommend it if you can get your hands on it. It's a quick read, but bears rereading.

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Readings, readings, readings:

On Wednesday night I helped set up for a reading at the Democracy Center in Harvard Square. It was part of the Ellen LaForge reading series, organized by Louisa Solano. The readers were Eugene Gloria and Barbara Ras. They were both good, so I'm glad the turnout was large. The fact that it was held in a former finals club gave me a warm glow all evening. Some changes are for the better.

On Thursday night I went to another reading at Lame Duck Books. This one was a launch for a new journal called Tuesday; An Art Project. It seems like a very interesting project: every poem is printed on its own card, the idea being that poems can be tactile objects. It was nice to talk to some of the poets afterwards. I always feel so awkward when I lurk about to get books signed, but it's a good way to make myself meet and talk to people. I ran into another Emerson alum, Mary, which was nice.