New European Poets by Wayne Miller, Kevin Prufer
2009; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 83; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/wlt.2009.0271
ISSN1945-8134
Autores Tópico(s)Poetry Analysis and Criticism
ResumoI wI I > I I * I I z I I WI I * I ? I I H I < I I * I WI I H I I Q I I I I * I O I of rains in his imagination, where he shelters themultiple voices that evoke the contemporary scenario. An unknowable bird of memory flies in the gray skies, reminding him of his loneliness, that of an inward-looking man who embraces silence and absence. The multiple voices of rains also tune the cadence and rhythm that form Mohanty's creative process, demonstrating a poetic genius pro gressing from the literal to the meta phoric and symbolic. Words that evoke musical sound and thought provoking sense, images that are poetic mirrors, and symbols that make the abstract concrete?read ers are spellbound by the impact of these poems and the Indian words that put the reader in touch with the land. These are the characteristic qualities that give freshness to the poems ofNiranjan Mohanty. SudhirK. Arora M./.P. RohilkhandUniversity,Bareilly Brane Mozetic. Banalities. Elizabeta 2argi & TimothyLiu, trs.New York.A Midsummer Night's Press (SPD, distr.). 2008. 64 pages. $10.95. isbn 978-0 9794208-3-2 "Anywhere out of the world" would satisfy Baudelaire's soul, but the persona in Brane Mozetic's linked sequence of fifty poems knows that despite dreams of "escape," a word that echoes throughout the volume as frequently as "alone," every place?Africa, America, the night mare cityof Ljubljana?is the same. Streets are gray and empty; the vision ofnight lifeisphantasmagoric, dark, a negative image of thecentral panel of Brueghel's Garden ofEarthly Delight; the poet's room is either a prison or an ordered refuge thatno one can enter. Visions of a lifewhere people love, tranquilly look at the sunset, and read old books seem to him absurd. Inhis past, his grandfa ther,"the first who realized that I'm not worthy / of life,"exiled him to thepigpen and thendropped a stick on him; then "They"?family, soci ety??"murdered me, slowly, year / afteryear" before "You strangled me ..." He has so little sense of self thathe can't fillout a formtoplace a personal ad. Brief moments of peace and contentment flash from thepast: the first clumsy attempts at physical intimacy, theboy who liked togive him rides on his bicycle and hold his hand before recoiling fromhis feel ings and becoming fat and stupid. Everything else, in thewrenching catalog of things "To forget" in the final poem in the sequence, seems futileor painful or both. Still, though he says here that "many things / won't roll offmy tongue and Iprefer tohide, be silent, prefer / to forget,"somehow poetry is made even though "I'm too stupid to write smart poems"; although the chronicle of "stoned poets" and compensatory sex "is definitely not poetry"; and although an evening of poetry fails to happen and "not even a poem was made, only banal /prose we might have called imma ture,hard to classify / as great lit erature," something is salvaged and set forthinmeasured language that fallssomewhere between poetry and prose. The result,thoughoften impres sive, is difficult to characterize. Brane Mozetic's speaker refuses to overstate or romanticize, wants to disappear but maintains a ghostly presence in theworld, and with a desperate courage silently echoes Beckett's Unnamable: "I can't go on. I'll go on." Robert Murray Davis Universityof Oklahoma New European Poets. Wayne Miller& Kevin Pr?fer, eds. St. Paul, Minnesota. Graywolf. 2008. xxx + 401 pages. $18. isbn978-1-55597-492-3 Although American readers are familiar with the names of major earlyand mid-twentieth-century European poets?Montale, Akhma tova, Celan, Transtr?mer?the names of contemporary poets born and active in the latterpart of the century and into the current century are considerably lesswell known. It was the task ofWayne Miller and Kevin Pr?fer to address and update this gap in knowledge by enlisting thehelp of twenty-fourregional edi torswho selected and translated the verse of 270 poets whose work was first published after 1970. The result is a major anthology that represents all countries inEurope and includes thework ofmany new poets who are published here for the firsttime inEnglish. The language styles of these poems comprise a striking range of contrasts. Poets who use more tra ditional, metaphoric language like Italy's Valerio Magrelli, Sweden's Hakan Sandell, and Ireland's Nuala .IIIIII. .1.11111111111111111111111111111111. 74 i World Literature Today EUROPEAN WAYNE MILLER, and KEVIN PRJJFER. Ni Dhomhnaill are presented along side those who use a more literal, colloquial language, likeRomania's Simona Popescu or Ukrainian poet Yuri Andrukhovych (seeWLT, Sep tember 2005, 24-32). The length of individual poems tends toward longer rather than shorter, and poetic influences are eclectic, rang ing from surrealism and dadaism to Russian acmeism and American confessionalism. What is equally striking is the breadth of historical engagement in many of the poems. The Finnish poet Martin Enckell offers a haunt ing hymn to the romantic, tragic history of the city of St. Petersburg ("in thiscityof the mothers, and the sphinxes, / lifewrites its shadow script, as in fever/'), and the Norwe gian poet 0ystein Wingaard Wolf presents a potent poem-memoir of a Jewish soap-maker who "became a small pile of soap and ashes / that theNazis wanted towash Europe with." Notable too is the frequency with which a playfully ironic or irreverent tone dominates the selec tions. Polish poet Ewa Sonnenberg What isequally striking isthe breadth of historical engagement in many of the poems. The Finnish poet Martin Enckelloffers a haunting hymnto the romantic,tragic history of thecity of St. Petersburgand the Norwegian poet 0ysteinWingaard Wolf presents a potent poem memoir of a Jewish soap-maker. wryly addresses the poem as if it were a person ("My funny little poem I'llwarm you inmy hands / we'll tell life we're sorry for writing not living"). The German poet Ulla Hahn delivers a witty send-up in sonnet form of both the lover and theact of love-making: "Rub ringsof sunshine intobelly's shell / so that thewarmth remains. / Then keep my eyelids open,my lips aswell." In theirintroduction,theeditors explain thatone of theirreasons for bringing together thepoems in this anthology was that the cultural and historical evolution of Europe dur ing the past few decades resulted in thewriting of "radically differ ent" poetry, creating theneed foran update. They also express concern that current American readers of = poetry and American poets them- = selves may have become less inter- = ested in European poetry in recent = years. Ifthat is true, it is all the more = reason forus tobe grateful thatwe = have been given access to an assem- = blage of contemporary European = verse that is uniformly vibrant and = well translated. = Rita Signorelli-Pappas = Princeton, New Jersey = Claude Vigee. Liewesschprooch E Dichtung: Langue d'amour?Poesie E (1940-2008). Bischwiller, France. 1 L'Associationdes Amis du Musee de la E Laub. 2008. 184 pages. 20. isbn 978- 1 2-9512380-8-4| "A language can only be pro- E nounced dead when no breath of E poetry strives to awaken it from a E prolonged coma, bestowing on it E with devotion, talent, and love, a E saving kiss of life/'Claude Vigee E writes about his endangered native E tongue,Alsatian, in the introduction E tohis newest book of poetry. Vigee E isa prolific, well-known French poet E who was awarded theGrand Prix E de Poesie de la Societe des Gens de E Lettres in 1987 and theGrand Prix E de Poesie de l'Academie Francaise in E 1997,amongmany otherdistinctions. E Today at eighty-seven,Vigee has had E a remarkable career spanning some = sixty years, with over fiftypoetry E collections inFrench, and important E French translationsofRilke and T. S. E Eliot. Translations of his works into E English include the recentChants de E Yabsence/Songs of Absence, translated E byAnthony Rudolf (2007), and Flow E Tide: SelectedPoetry and Prose, edited E and translated by Anthony Rudolf, E with additional translationsbyWillis E Barnstone (1992). Liewesschprooch, the E Alsatian word for"language of love," E isClaude Vigee's first book ofpoetry E _March-April 2009 i75 ...
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