Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre loom over twentieth-century thought. It is hard to imagine feminism, leftist politics, literature, philosophy, or queer studies in the twentieth century without these two giants. Their work has been the topic for hundreds of books and articles, while their romance/friendship has been the cause of controversy and admiration in equal measure. The following is excerpted from a documentary on their lifelong relationship and their work.
Author: asitoughttobemagazine
SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: HANNAH FRIES
By Hannah Fries:
BUT SEE
how an orchid is made to look like sex, or
specifically, like the tachinid fly
who has landed on a leaf to flash
her private parts in the sun, opening
and closing so the light
catches. No wonder her hapless mate
must ravish the flower whose petals
are extended wings, barred yellow
and red-brown, stigma reflecting the sunlight.
Some orchids dance. Some reward
a bee with priceless perfume that lures
sweet attention. So what if I sweep up
my hair to show my neck, so what
if someone begins to kiss it?
Consider the bowerbird, jewelling
his nest with sapphire. Ask the two snakes braiding
their muscled lengths. See how God is in love
with sex, and how we are made
in her image! Like a lovesick ungulate,
haven’t you forgotten to eat for weeks?
Have you heard the barred owls scream
all night? Seen fireflies flashing their silent sirens?
The woodcock spirals higher and higher, then
plummets in sharp zigzags, wind
whistling through his wings like a song
(Song of Songs: honey and milk
under your tongue).
Nothing, after all, is solid—atoms flying
in all directions, ocean currents plunging
into themselves. Why not two bodies
by firelight, stunned by their bare
skin, their own flickering sudden
perfection? No hellfire here.
When galaxies collide, there is no wreck,
no blazing crash of suns and moons. Just
a rushing together, a folding in—
and a heat beyond orchids—
birthing, baptizing heat.
“But See” originally appeared in Terrain.org, and appears here today with permission from the poet.
Hannah Fries lives in western Massachusetts, where she is associate editor and poetry editor of Orion magazine. She is a graduate of the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers and is the recipient of a Colorado Art Ranch residency. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Massachusetts Review, Drunken Boat, Calyx, The Cortland Review, Terrain.org, and other journals. She also serves on the board of The Frost Place—a Robert Frost Museum and poetry center in Franconia, NH—and on the organizing committee of the Berkshire Festival for Women Writers.
Editor’s Note: A comment on this poem (on Terrain.org) reads, “and now I feel like I need a cigarette and maybe a shower.” Amen! What a fierce, unabashed exploration of the sexual in nature, and of humans as creatures of that same nature. Fries explores sex against the Puritanical backdrop inherent in this country, as something that should be accepted and celebrated rather than demoralized. “See how God is in love / with sex, and how we are made / in her image!” Today’s poem is a little Ellen Key, a little Darwin, a little Anais Nin, and all revolutionary. Even at a time when little shocks the sensibilities, Fries uses poetry to take the reader one step out of their comfort zone and into the wild world of the natural.
Want to see more by Hannah Fries?
Hear Hannah Fries read “But See” and hear/read her poem “Descending Killington Peak” on Terrain.org
Orion
The Frost Place
“Pygmalion’s Girl”
“Love at Formel’s Junkyard”
A Crisis in Bahrain
Leave it to the people to make the news and try to spread it. When it’s left to the big newsmakers, the news is nothing more than a short report about the “situation” somewhere.
The world paid attention to what was covered by the media during the Arab revolutions of 2011: Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria. But there’s one more that is strategically ignored: Bahrain. In order to bring attention to this crisis, we must therefore turn to the social media that launched the Green Movement in Iran, the Arab Spring, and the Occupy Movement.
While many look at the protests as a Shia Muslim majority rising against the ruling Sunni minority, this is a simplistic overlook. It is in the benefit of many of the participants in this “situation” to call it a sectarian conflict; to use the Iranian boogeyman to scare off any sympathy from Sunni Arabs and the West. This has been very successful. The careful and limited comments made by the Obama administration are proof enough. It is a given that the comments made by Hilary Clinton about any crisis in the world determine how serious it is. How serious could Bahrain be if there’s no mention of it whatsoever?
The protests are not without a history. The 90s uprisings in Bahrain are the immediate backdrop of the current crisis. This is the Human Rights Watch report from 1997 on the 90s Uprisings in Bahrain.
Not much has changed since. The Saudi-backed (hence, American-backed) Bahraini government uses whatever means necessary to crush the protests; the first and ever-so convincing claim made is that they are Iranian-backed and therefore sectarian to the bone. This is not about democracy, it is merely about dethroning a Sunni royal family and replace it with an Iranian(-backed) Shia government. It is to discredit it, to claim that it is not demands for democracy, equal opportunities and human rights, but demands for a theocracy.
Months of brutal crackdowns on protests and demonstrations have passed. The claims that Iran is involved has been the motto under which human rights violations are committed. Then came the Bassiouni report. An independent investigation commissioned by the Bahraini government and headed by Cherif Bassiouni. The most remarkable find: no ties to Iran. (Page 387)
The report exposed the government and confirmed many of the allegations of torture and excessive indiscriminate force against civilians which lead to many deaths.
The Huffington Post on the BICI report.
You’d expect that the government would make amends now. No.
The famous human rights activist Abdul-Hadi Al-Khawaja was arrested in April 8th 2011. He “was tried before a military tribunal and given a life sentence for allegedly conspiring to overthrow the Bahrain government. Both his trial and subsequent appeal, which was also heard before a military tribunal, have been heavily criticised by major human rights and legal organisations. The BICI further found that after he was sentenced, he was ‘beaten by guards’. The findings of the BICI report were also very critical of the quality of the justice Mr al-Khawaja and other political leaders received.”
Abdul-Hadi Al-Khawaja has been on a hunger strike for over 70 days now. A few hours ago he asked to meet his lawyer to write his will. The request was denied. He however made a phone call to his wife urging the people to continue the peaceful resistance. He stopped drinking water, and it is only a matter of time before he passes away. Read more about Abdul-Hadi Al-Khawaja.
Meanwhile… Formula One is oblivious to all of this and continues to hold the Grand Prix in Bahrain.
Thousands of Protesters Demand Halt to Formula One Race in Bahrain.
Noam Chomsky on Bahrain:
“The US supports all of this so it keeps quiet. The main concern of the US and its allies is the oil producing states. Bahrain is not a main oil producer, but it’s part of the oil producing system so they don’t want any trouble there.”
Shouting in the Dark
“The story of the Arab revolution that was abandoned by the Arabs, forsaken by the West and forgotten by the world.”
The highly acclaimed Al-Jazeera International documentary on Bahrain:
Human Rights violations:
US recent arms deal with Bahrain.
A woman imprisoned for listening to “revolutionary” music!
Medics describe torture in detention.
Fired for participating in protests.
Medics in Bahrain are targets of retribution.
Suspicious deaths in custody.
One year on, accountability remains a distant aspiration.
Prisoner describes torture to court.
Deadly use of tear gas.
Military court finds medics guilty.
Poet sentenced for reading a poem. (She was released later)
A human rights crisis in Bahrain.
More human rights reports on Bahrain:
Human Rights Watch on Bahrain.
Amnesty International on Bahrain.
Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI), the Bassiouni Report.
RYAN ZWENG
“Birth” by Ryan Zweng.
THE DEATH OF POP
by Ryan Zweng
The world is ending, or at least the Old World is. Let’s assume that history will paint this epoch as a crucial moment in social formation; a time when all things political and artistic were challenged, and the archaic power structures that used to favor Old Money finally sank — Titanic style — into a sea of cold and fading privilege.
News flash: Record Labels, and their methods of controlling the Music Industry are on the top of this list of dying dinosaurs. So why is it that bands like Nightmare and The Cat still manage to make the top every music blog out there, get signed almost immediately, and despite being derivative, will probably continue to live a long life filled with the privilege of recording their music with the best producers in the world? Its because the band is fronted by the sons of one of the 80’s more successful Pop Musicians — Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics — and as much as the recession has sucked the life blood out of every facet of “middle class” American existence, one fact remains: if your Blood is Blue, you will survive the impending vampire weekend, or month, or century for that matter, with out the slightest trace of a struggle; not a fang mark in sight on your silver spoon-fed neck.
So where does that leave the future of true “art”? — I mean the stuff forged by struggles and hardships, the stuff that made the music of men like George Harrison so compelling, and the sounds his son Dhani makes so, well, forgettable? Take one look at Martin Scorcese’s recent documentary on Harrison, Living In the Material World, and you may find some answers. In the 2-part HBO feature George takes us around the world, continually challenging his spiritual existence for a higher truth. His son on the other hand remains content inside the soundproofed walls of his lavish home studio. One is the reason we make documentaries, the other isn’t. You do the math.
One would think that now, after the majority of the Major Label Monsters have been reduced, that only true, struggling or brilliant artists would take the lime light, and the system that used to make millionaires out of mediocre pretty boys would be demolished before they could produce heirs. News Flash Number Two: It just isn’t so.
At least not completely. As we continue to develop new models for civil improvement, we are going to find more and more aspects of our lives dying. This is a good thing; a sign that humanity really is ridding itself of our historically flawed social designs, or at least becoming more “Flat”, as Thomas Freidman first noted in 2005. But while phenomenons like massive studio budgets, glutinous album sales, and big advances have started filling our metaphysical graveyards, there remains remnants of an outdated system that we still need to question, and duel to the death.
So whats missing from this emerging musical equation? Stories, for one. While its now possible through entities like CD Baby, Garage Band and iTunes to cheaply write, record, master, and distribute an album without leaving one’s room, it still isn’t guaranteed that such ease of production will in fact produce anything worth retaining. The easier it becomes to make art, the easier it will be to dispose of it.
This may be one major reason why Keith Richards’ 2010 autobiography Life topped the New York Times non-fiction list within its first week of publication. The Stones, despite the comfortable confines their work now affords them, started out in a post-apocalyptic London wasteland, enslaved themselves with a monastic study of Mississippi Blues music, struggled to find initial success, and then after they had all the money in the world, still managed to remain on the brink of utter disaster at all times. That’s a story, that’s why their songs have such a shelf life, and that’s still the formula for creating meaningful art, despite Technology’s attempts to make you believe something different.
Oh no, I said it, Technology! While it may be what gets us out of this “Recession Era”, it is also very much at the eye of the social tornado that has our nation ravaged- at least culturally. While the immense distribution capabilities of modern innovation provide us with something great on one hand, they are robbing us of something greater on the other. Returning to the Stones; the chance meeting between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards that lead to their forming the band occurred because one had a collection of extremely rare American blues records, and the two forged their musical muscle through a savage hunt for this elusive and controversial inspiration. Today that would never happen. Keith could have YouTubed what he was in search of without leaving his home, sent Mick a text on his iPhone, they could have enjoyed a few seconds of the song in separate places, at separate times, and moved on to the next momentary sensation in solitude.
Luckily for us though, Mr. Jagger and Richards do in fact come from a different time, and the symptoms of their upbringing continue to shine a light- no pun intended- on new artistic formulas to this day. In fact, the only thing I wanted to talk about when I recently met Sam Stewart- guitarist for the aforementioned Nightmare and The Cat- was the project his father has spearheaded with Mick Jagger, Joss Stone and another of music’s most hallowed heirs, Mr. Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley.
Superheavy, which is this new supergroup’s name, may not be the most tortured or inherently humbled collection of artists at work in the music world at present, but they are doing one thing that other Blue Bloods and Pop Royalty aren’t: taking risks. Maybe that’s why Maroon 5’s latest Pop smash claims that they have “moves like Jagger”; because if they were actually willing to challenge the Pop paradigm they are kings of, our society might be able to advance a bit culturally and they could claim to have their own “moves.”
Reviews for Coldplay’s latest album Mylo Xyoto paints the band in much the same light; a Pop superpower that is content with not evolving. Is Radiohead really the last collection of true artist who will be able to succeed in such a commercial world? I hope not, and as much as hope is beginning to remove itself from my cultural horizons, there are a still a few musicians out there who seam to offer redemption. Final News Flash: Believe it or not, they are Blue Bloods.
I’m talking about the Strokes to some extent, and Damian Marley again to a much greater one. What Damian is doing now with Superheavy is just one aspect of a career marked by unorthodox collaborations and inventive musical explorations. His work with Nas on last year’s Distant Relatives is another example of how he has tried to push the musical envelope with his clout, instead of simply remaining content as the son of maybe the most internationally revered artists of all time.
Mr. Marley is a rare case of a Blue Blood who uses his strategic position in society to either inform his audience from a normally unobtainable position in life, or to advance the arts through access to resources that normal mortals don’t have. I mention the Strokes as members of this species as well, because despite being descendants of legendary producers and international fashion moguls, the band’s members have managed to take their glamorous roots and either reject them with appropriate style or channel them intelligently. They didn’t record their groundbreaking first album in an East Village basement because they couldn’t afford a studio; they did it because it was cooler that way.
No matter what the color of your Blood is, the changes that our world is going through are going to have an affect on everyone to some degree. The wealthy may be the last to feel it, even if they are technically musicians, so — to quote Bowie — “look out you rock n’ rollers.” Not because you are getting older, but because attention spans are getting shorter, the rich still have power, and like it or not your jobs as artists in society have gotten harder.
Don’t be fooled, there is a major revolution going on right now, but its not the type that forged the musical renaissance of the 1960’s. Our revolution is developing every second, every day, and in multiple countries simultaneously. It may be a lot quieter, and less dramatic than the chaos of the 1960’s, but what we are doing as a global society today is monumental.
What we need next is an artistic advancement as powerful as our technological advancements. And while some may feel that the two entities are working together to forge something new, I tend to consider them at war. Maybe this battle is the cultural coup d’etat that society has always needed, but one thing is for sure, the Royals shouldn’t get to lead the troops into battle any more.
A version of this essay appeared in PopMatters on March 14, 2012.
Ryan Zweng’s blog is artzweng.blogspot.com
SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: SUSANNA LANG
REMEMBERING
By Susanna Lang
What has kept the world safe . . . [has] been memory.
— John Hersey
But we forget, don’t we?
Not what happened, but the thickness of it.
The rough edges of the table
on the café terrace, moisture
beading on your glass. The way the woman
who would become your wife
kept pushing her hair off her forehead.
The sound of a cicada spinning to its death on the sidewalk,
a papery sound, like someone thumbing through a book.
Think of the man who returns
a year after the five-day war
in which his house was burned.
What’s left of it
still stands on the corner, so he can search
among the black and crumbled stones,
the splintered table legs, for the photo
he didn’t expect to find—
photo of a woman, her hair swept back
in a style no one wears anymore. He’d forgotten
that she used to wear her hair that way,
as he’s forgotten the stretched feel of his skin
in the heat of the flames he watched from across the street,
though he’d tell you that’s the one thing
he would remember forever.
“Remembering” originally appeared in Terrain.org, and appears here today with permission from the poet.
Susanna Lang’s first collection of poems, Even Now, was published in 2008 by The Backwaters Press. A chapbook, Two by Two, was released in October 2011 from Finishing Line Press, and a new collection, Tracing the Lines, will be published by Brick Road Poetry Press in fall 2012. She has published original poems and essays, and translations from the French, in such journals as Little Star, New Letters, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, The Green Mountains Review, The Baltimore Review, Kalliope, Southern Poetry Review, World Literature Today, Chicago Review, New Directions, and Jubilat. Book publications include translations of Words in Stone and The Origin of Language, both by Yves Bonnefoy. She lives with her husband and son in Chicago, where she teaches in the Chicago Public Schools.
Editor’s Note: Ah, memory, that fallible arena. You love, you lose, you swear you’ll always remember, but in the end, memory is unreliable. It is a heartbreak inherent in the human condition. With today’s poem, Susanna Lang artfully captures the longing to retain memory, and the grief over its inevitable loss.
Want to see more by Susanna Lang?
Susanna Lang Author Page for Even Now at The Backwaters Press
Buy Two by Two from Finishing Line Press
Tracing the Lines (forthcoming from Brick Road Poetry Press, 2012)
Susanna Lang Official Website
SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: JOHN MCKERNAN
By John McKernan:
MY GREATEST CRIMES
Were at the Walt Whitman Birthplace
Near Huntington Long Island
Where I walked impudently across the lawn
With its large sign
DO NOT WALK ON THE GRASS
Where I ignored the small warning
DO NOT ENTER
In front of a shed
Full of hand tools & power mowers
Inside which lay chunks
In cool sunlight
Of bright green sod
One of which I snatched
And stashed in the trunk of my car
All of which I planted
At different places
Around my yard here
In West Virginia
Driving away I stopped my car
And picked bunches
Of dandelions beside the road
If I had seen a lilac shrub anywhere
I would have ripped
It from the earth with my bare hands
“My Greatest Crimes” originally appeared in The 2River View 16.2 (Winter 2012), and appears here today with permission from the poet.
John McKernan—who grew up in Omaha Nebraska in the middle of the USA—is now retired after teaching 41 years at Marshall University. He lives—mostly—in West Virginia where he edits ABZ Press. His most recent book is a selected poems Resurrection of the Dust. He has published poems in The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Journal, Antioch Review, Guernica, Field and many other magazines.
Editor’s Note: Today’s poem appears simple and yet is layered with rich folds of complexity. You might contemplate what it means for a home of Whitman’s to require one to refrain from walking on the grass, and then find yourself swept away by McKernan’s extremely subtle but highly adept witticism. The poem reaches its climax with man imagining himself on his knees ripping lilac from the earth, envisioning a oneness with nature that Whitman himself would have championed.
McKernan is a master of the art of subtlety in the poem. One only has to look closely and think actively to appreciate the genius of McKernan’s craft.
Want to see more by John McKernan?
Buy Resurrection of the Dust on Amazon
Read a selection from John McKernan Greatest Hits (1969-2001) on Google Books
Find many of John McKernan’s poems online
SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: AMBER FLORA THOMAS
MAGICIAN
By Amber Flora Thomas
To the conjurer of rabbits out of black hats, the escapist
down to his final act of vanishing beneath fifty pounds of chains,
you are born. To his legacy of tricks and Houdini-style
metamorphosis just waiting to spin out
into the San Francisco morning, where delivery trucks
back up to doors, caution lights sending yellow
like a heartbeat against the night.
He puts his hand over your mouth. Are you
the fire-eater? You come direct from the illusionist
to catapult from the black raft of his blessing.
The infant devotion: eyes newly open
believe the world: murky, against the white walls
ambient motions. You’ll play a charmed rodent, and disappear
beneath his black cape. Another feat of possession.
Another vat of bottled smoke. He loosens knots,
saws the box open, rips a red scarf from his sleeve.
The silk becomes a dove becomes a rabbit
and the cages hide in the floor.
Today’s poem is from the book The Rabbits Could Sing (University of Alaska Press, 2012), and appears here today with permission from the poet.
Amber Flora Thomas was born and raised in San Francisco, earned her BA at Humboldt State University, and earned her MFA at Washington University in St. Louis. She is the author of The Rabbits Could Sing (University of Alaska Press, 2012) and the Eye of Water (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, including Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry and Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade. She has taught at Washington University in St. Louis, Dominican University of California, and the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. She lives in Fairbanks, Alaska.
Editor’s Note: I was introduced to Amber Flora Thomas when she read with Peggy Shumaker and Li-Young Lee at a Red Hen Press reading held in New York’s Poets House. When she introduced today’s poem, she told the following story. Her parents were hippies living in San Francisco’s Haight district in the 1960’s and 1970’s. When Thomas was born, her father was asked to indicate his occupation on her birth certificate. He wrote “magician.” A child of San Francisco hippies myself, I couldn’t help but laugh. My father, too, would have enjoyed this. Listening to Thomas read this lyrical poem wrought with finely-chiseled images, I was transported to world—at once real and magical—conjured from thin air by a father for his daughter.
Want to see more by Amber Flora Thomas?
The Poetry Foundation
Buy The Rabbits Could Sing from University of Alaska Press
Buy Eye of Water from University of Pittsburgh Press
SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: LI-YOUNG LEE
By Li-Young Lee:
THE GIFT
To pull the metal splinter from my palm
my father recited a story in a low voice.
I watched his lovely face and not the blade.
Before the story ended, he’d removed
the iron sliver I thought I’d die from.
I can’t remember the tale,
but hear his voice still, a well
of dark water, a prayer.
And I recall his hands,
two measures of tenderness
he laid against my face,
the flames of discipline
he raised above my head.
Had you entered that afternoon
you would have thought you saw a man
planting something in a boy’s palm,
a silver tear, a tiny flame.
Had you followed that boy
you would have arrived here,
where I bend over my wife’s right hand.
Look how I shave her thumbnail down
so carefully she feels no pain.
Watch as I lift the splinter out.
I was seven when my father
took my hand like this,
and I did not hold that shard
between my fingers and think,
Metal that will bury me,
christen it Little Assassin,
Ore Going Deep for My Heart.
And I did not lift up my wound and cry,
Death visited here!
I did what a child does
when he’s given something to keep.
I kissed my father.
FROM BLOSSOMS
From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.
From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.
O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.
There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
Today’s poems are from the book Rose (BOA Editions Ltd., 1986), and appear here today with permission from the poet.
Li-Young Lee was born in 1957 in Jakarta, Indonesia, of Chinese parents. In 1959, his father, after spending a year as a political prisoner in President Sukarno’s jails, fled Indonesia with his family. Between 1959 and 1964 they traveled in Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan, until arriving in America.
Mr. Lee studied at the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Arizona, and the State University of New York, College at Brockport. He has taught at various universities, including Northwestern University and the University of Iowa. He is the author of four books of poetry and one memoir and has been the recipient of numerous honors and awards.
Editor’s Note: At his recent reading with Peggy Shumaker and Amber Flora Thomas (held in New York’s Poets House and sponsored by Red Hen Press), I had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hear Li-Young Lee read. Not only to experience this performance, but to shake the poet’s hand and tell him how much his words have meant to me, how his poems above all others have been a vessel for me in my grief.
Between my father’s passing and seeing Mr. Lee speak I read Rose cover to cover, perpetually weeping. When tears would not come to me, though I felt the need to express them, it was this book that opened me up and enabled release. I cannot read Lee’s simple, sincere, and elegant poetic contemplations of the loss of his father without becoming one with him in his grief, and in so doing becoming one with my own, as I must.
Lee’s words and thoughts paint themselves into the mind’s eye like the most finely-crafted calligraphy. Simple beauty that defies the painstaking art required to make it. “O, to take what we love inside, / to carry within us an orchard.” I can scarcely conceive of a poet who better exemplifies what poetry ought to be.
Want to see more by Li-Young Lee?
Buy Rose from Boa Editions Ltd.
Poets.org
Poetry Foundation
The Possible Is Monstrous: A Book Review
The Possible Is Monstrous: A Book Review
by Okla Elliott
[The following review originally appeared in The Southeast Review.]
The Possible Is Monstrous
by Friedrich Dürrenmatt (translated by Daniele Pantano)
Black Lawrence Press, 2010
ISBN 978-0-9826228-1-0
$17.00
Swiss author Friedrich Dürrenmatt was born in 1921 and died in 1990, meaning he saw WWII, its direct aftermath, the entire Cold War, and the advent of post-modernism. His work can generally be described as experimental, philosophical, and political, with themes that reflect the major world events and European cultural concerns during his lifetime. Dürrenmatt is best known as a playwright and a novelist, but his nonfiction and poetry are equally impressive. Unfortunately, Dürrenmatt’s poetry, which incorporates the historical events of his lifetime as well as philosophical meditations on those events, has been largely unavailable to English speakers—until now, that is.
Given its relative obscurity, most non-German speakers are unfamiliar with Dürrenmatt’s poetry. He is a frequent practitioner of the longer poem, and The Impossible Is Monstrous offers us a sizable sampling of these. What is most impressive about Dürrenmatt’s longer poems is how he maintains movement and breath in a way that makes the poems feel much shorter, despite their weighty subject matter and length. He writes occasionally in rhyme and meter, with the majority of his poems being in free verse. A shorter poem exemplary of his overall style is “Dramaturgic Advice,” reproduced here in its entirety:
Don’t give us any profound talk
Don’t add to the mystery
It’s not the word
Create a shape
Three men at a table
What they say is not important
They want to do right
But the dice are cast
Who boards the wrong train
May run back in it
But arrives where he didn’t
want to go
Here we have the lyric-philosophic tone Dürrenmatt uses in several other poems in the book. We also find another common theme in the book—theatre. Several of the poems are choruses from plays that can be read as stand-alone works, and Dürrenmatt discusses theatre as an art and his own particular theatrical works. Done differently, this could be a weakness, but the way Dürrenmatt handles it only adds to the reader’s pleasure. As we see in “Dramaturgic Advice,” the poem is not limited by its interest in theatre but rather made larger and more interesting, made to carry extra meaning(s) because of it. It is a poem about life, but with that title, it becomes a poem about art, representation, and meaning-making as well.
Dürrenmatt’s free verse poems—their tone, underlying music, and content—come across wonderfully in Pantano’s translations. Pantano also solidly handles the much more difficult task of translating formal verse. For example, in “O World of Men and Murders” (a 50-line poem), the first four lines “O Welt der Männer und der Morde, / Voll Schmach, voll Haß, voll grauser Tat, / Hinunter schlingt jetzt deine Horde / Der Hölle Maul samt deiner Saat” become in English “O world of men and murders, / Shameful, hateful, full of grisly deeds, / Hell consumes your hordes / Along with your seed.” Pantano has changed the rhyme from ABAB to ABCB, which is a good compromise between doing excessive violence to the content in order to retain all of the form or getting rid of the formal aspects entirely and merely doing a prose translation. After those opening four lines, he abandons this tactic for most of the poem (though there is an occasional off-rhyme), and then ends the translation with the same rhyme replacement move. He therefore begins and ends with strong hints of the rhyme in the original and has occasional reminders throughout the poem, yet he does not lose anything by way of content. In another poem, “To Unchain Man’s Chains,” Pantano cleverly orders the syntax of his English so as to have the word “chain” (or some variation on it) end seven of the twelve lines of the poem. Dürrenmatt’s original has six of the twelve lines end with the German equivalent of variations on “chain,” though his poem is more structured and every line has a rhyme (in the pattern ABAB ACAC ADAD). Pantano has, therefore, more or less used the same tactic here again. He retained the word repetition/rhyme so as to reproduce the general effect of the poem, but he didn’t slavishly chain himself, as it were, to the poem’s form, thus allowing him also to reproduce the content more faithfully. And since it is a dual-language book, if you can even just sound out the noises of the German, you can get the exact original music from the German, and then you have the English for the literal meaning.
The inclusion of the German alongside the English also increases the book’s value as a scholarly text, and that’s not the only aspect that makes it useful in this respect. The Possible Is Monstrous also includes a short scholarly essay by Peter Rüedi (also translated by Pantano) on Dürrenmatt’s poetry, as well as a longish editor’s note on his poetry. There are also three pages of end notes to help readers not familiar with German or Swiss literary figures, works, cities, etc. All of these scholarly aspects, none of which are intrusive on the reading of the poems themselves, make the book ideal for the classroom or for research on Dürrenmatt’s poetry (of which, thanks to this volume, there can be much more).
In the final analysis, Pantano has done both scholars and lovers of poetry alike a service with this (long overdue) selection of Dürrenmatt’s best poetry, and his translations are accurate, generally excellent, and, I predict, destined to become the standard English versions. The book is well designed and printed, adding another nice book (as object and as cultural product) to Black Lawrence Press’s growing list. The Possible Is Monstrous is worthy of serious attention and should be in every academic library and on every poet’s bookshelf.
SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: PEGGY SHUMAKER
BEYOND WORDS, THIS LANGUAGE
By Peggy Shumaker
The morning I was born
you held my hand.
The morning you died
I held your hand.
What’s left
to forgive?
Today’s poem appears in Gnawed Bones (Red Hen Press, 2010), and appears here today with permission from the poet.
Peggy Shumaker is Alaska State Writer Laureate. Her most recent book of poems is Gnawed Bones. Her lyrical memoir is Just Breathe Normally. She’s at work on Toucan Nest, a book of poems set in Costa Rica. Professor emerita from University of Alaska Fairbanks, Shumaker teaches in the Rainier Writing Workshop. She is founding editor of Boreal Books, publishers of fine art and literature from Alaska. She edits the Alaska Literary Series at University of Alaska Press.
Editor’s Note: I recently had the extreme pleasure of seeing Peggy Shumaker read with Amber Flora Thomas and Li-Young Lee at New York’s Poets House, at an event sponsored by Red Hen Press. It was one of the most moving and charged readings I’ve attended, and Peggy Shumaker delivered a deliberate, thoughtful performance. Today’s poem was recited from memory—Shumaker’s eyes locked with the audience—and tears ran down my cheeks.
On my way into the world, my father held me. On his way out, I held him. This was a gift. Being a reader and writer of poems is also a gift; an entry into shared experience, an outlet for the personal.
Want to see more by Peggy Shumaker?
Peggy Shumaker Official Website
Purchase Gnawed Bones from Red Hen Press
Read, Watch, and Listen to Peggy’s work online
As It Ought To Be 