Tua Forsström - The Principle of Wings

The Snow Whirls Over the Courtyard's Roses

Tua Forsström, translated from the Swedish by Stina Katchadourian

The snow whirls over the courtyard's roses.
Didn't bring my boots and scarf, leafing
through books, don't know what to do with all this light!
You wouldn't approve of the colours.
It's too striking, Andrei Arsenyevich, too
much, too much of everything!
You exchanged the wings for an aerial balloon, a clumsy
creation cobbled together from rope and rags, I remember so well.
Before, I had a lot and didn't remember. Difficult
to stick to the subject. Difficult to stick to the subject.
Hope to return. Hope to return to the principle
of wings. The fact remains: the freeze preserved
the rose garden last night. 'The zone is a zone, the zone is life,
and a person can either be ruined or survive when
she makes her way through this life. Whether she makes it or
not depends on her sense of self-esteem-' A hare
almost hopped into the entrance hall here at the Foundation,
mottled against the snow; it's October in the hare's calendar.
You seem to be a moody sort of person
and it's possible that none of this is of interest to you.
On the other hand, you yourself complain fairly often.
I'm writing because you are dead and because I woke up
last spring in my streetside hotel room in Benidorm to that wonderful
high twittering. One shouldn't constantly say one is sorry, one should
not constantly give thanks, one should definitely give thanks. Lake
Mälaren like lead down there. The rest is white and red.

*

The books blog writer, Carol Rumens, writes about this particular work:

The poems in After Spending a Night Among Horses are inspired by the film-maker Andrei Tarkovsky and are interleaved with quotations from Tarkovsky's film, Stalker, and from his prose-book, Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema. Tarkovsky once said, "There is only one way of thinking in cinema: poetically." Forsström expresses the reverse idea, of thinking in poetry cinematically. The collection itself is a montage, and many of the individual poems, like this one, draw on a similar technique, combining different settings, seasons, voices and moods in one imaginative sweep. All have a dream-like and open-ended quality. 

Forsström has said that she writes every poem 50 or 60 times, and that she often travels with her notebooks to a foreign city in order to complete a poem. "The snow whirls over the courtyard's roses" seems to open a poetry workbook, to show us an intriguing display of raw material. It's a series of comments, notes and sketches for future writing, held together by the casual but constantly-renewed conversation with Tarkovsky. There are moments of lyric concentration and heightened rhythm, but they're held in a framework of increasingly long and enjambed lines which seem to exert an outward pull. While the imagery of snow and roses recalls Louis MacNeice's poem "Snow," Forsström's vision of the world's incorrigible plurality is far more discursive. There's really no zone, it seems to say, and no magical room, even for the poet: there's only the journey.

I'm fascinated by the recursive qualities, the repetitions and dialogue with the film-maker. The visual images are vivid.  The principle of wings seems important - an upward movement whether this is actual bird flight, the ascending balloon, or snow.

To see the entire article: http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/mar/04/poem-week-the-snow-whirls-tua-forsstrom

To read another poem, "Houdini in Karis" by Tua Forsström featured by this blogger: 
 http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/jun/15/poem-of-the-week-houdini-in-karis-by-tua-forsstrom

Helvi Juvonen

Because I am so close to the Finnish culture (my grandparents were born in Finland), I love to explore literature from Finland. These perhaps were influences on my grandparents, and as I read more Finnish literature in translation, I recognize and appreciate the connections.

Maybe this is because of the northern landscape — the cold and dark winters, the forests and lakes, the animals. Maybe this is because I was born in two languages. Each language shapes perception and thought. In poetry, my fascinations, my methods, my style is sometimes similar to the work of certain Finnish poets. Finnish poetry adds a new and interesting light.

Helvi Juvonen's poetry is arresting. According to Emily Jeremiah,

The sense of being in between can also be linked to Juvonen’s place in literary tradition, for she was a poet at the cusp of modernism. 

Modernism came to Finnish poetry in the 1940s and 1950s; at this time, formal restraint slowly gave way to freer forms. Juvonen’s poetry combines technical formality with startling imagery and a clear, direct voice. It moves between rhyme and free verse and forms a bridge between ‘tradition’ and modernism. 

Helvi Juvonen published five collections of poetry between 1949 and 1955; a sixth was published posthumously in 1959, and in 1974, a collection of prose works, edited by Mirkka Rekola, came out.

Helvi Juvonen's poem, "Cup Lichen" (1952) is vivid:

The lichen raised its fragile cup,
and rain filled it, and in the drop
the sky glittered, holding back the wind.

and from her poem "The Tightrope Walker": 

Two summits rose up above the dark.
Between them,
taut as a bow’s arc
the walker’s rope is strung.
If you look into the dark, dizziness strikes.
You need to have brains of ice. 

I see the summits, both ablaze.
Back and forth, back and forth!

And this poem:

Mid-day 

At mid-day the cranes flit.
The furrow is slashed bare.
Voices cry
with longing for some place away from here,
with longing for somewhere else away from here.

In another review by Soila Lehtinen, Juvonen is quoted as saying: "Kneel before what’s smaller than you, listening with your eyes. A word’s hidden there, bright and quiet."  Here is an excerpt of prose by Helvi Juvonen:

At last she grasped what was ahead. Not, in fact, discrete sunrises or sunsets, not some particular burning day here or there, but the present moment unfolding forward by itself. Coiling forward, it rolls into a ball within her brain, within her consciousness and beneath it. It is pastness living in herself and in the present moment. To meet the past you must meet yourself. Suddenly she grasped that you could find yourself in another’s eyes, live in another’s interior, note it as a fact, close your eyes and forget, repose in recipience of peace, because you’ve driven into peace the dead living within you, or the shades they left behind, dream-beings repeating events of long ago.

The pastness lives in me, and my exploration of the language and literature allow me to meet this aspect.

Juvonen also translated the work of Emily Dickinson into Finnish. I can feel similarities between their voices, and obviously Dickinson has had some influence.

The following two reviews provided information for this profile:
http://www.booksfromfinland.fi/2010/05/dreaming-a-dream-the-poetry-of-helvi-juvonen/
http://www.booksfromfinland.fi/1992/03/images-of-isolation/

More poems by Juvonen (in English):
http://www.booksfromfinland.fi/2010/05/words-like-songs/
More prose by Juvonen (in English):
http://www.booksfromfinland.fi/1992/03/moles-hole/

Kalevala: The National Epic of Finland

I consider the Finnish Literature Society website a good source that describes the Kalevala.  To understand it's significance, read this:
http://neba.finlit.fi/kalevala/index.php?m=163&l=2

To see the text in Finnish http://neba.finlit.fi/kalevala/index.php?m=1&s=2&l=1
To see the text in English http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5186

Runos singers perform the Kalevala while playing a kantele :
http://www.temps.fi/en/research/


An excerpt from the Finnish Literature Society:

It has been estimated that approximately 2,500–3,000 years ago there occurred a major new development in the culture of the proto-Finnic groups living near Gulf of Finland. The result of this development was a unique form of song characterized by alliteration and parallelism as well as an absence of stanza structure. The poetic metre of these songs was a special trochaic tetrametre which is now often called Kalevala metre.  

When sung, the lines actually had four or five stresses, and the melodies covered a narrow range, usually consisting of only five notes. The old folk poetry does not originate from a single historical period, but is a mixture of numerous layers which vary in age. The oldest layers are represented by mythical poems which tell of creation acts in a primordial past, as well as the origins of the world and human culture. 

The main character in epic poems is usually a mighty singer, shaman, and sorcerer, the spiritual leader of his clan who makes journeys to the land of the dead in order to seek knowledge. The songs' heroes also have adventures in a distant land beyond the sea, on journeys where they woo potential brides, make raids, and flee the enemy. Lyric songs express human, personal emotions. Ritual poems focus especially on weddings and bear-killing feasts. Kalevala metre incantations are verbal magic, which was part of people's everyday lives and activities. 

The archaic song tradition was a vital, living tradition throughout Finland until the 1500s. Following the Reformation, the Lutheran Church forbade the singing of the songs, declaring the entire tradition to be pagan. At the same time, new musical trends from the West found a foothold in Finland. The old Kalevala metre song tradition began to disappear first from the western part of the country and then, later, from other areas as well. Some songs were recorded already in the 1600s, but most of the folk poetry collection work was not carried out until the 1800s. In Archangel Karelia the old poetry tradition has survived until the present day.

Akseli Gallen-Kallela

All of these paintings are by Finnish visual artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela.  Click on this link for a timeline of his life and works: http://www.gallen-kallela.fi/en/akseli-gallen-kallelas-lifespan-and-timeline/

The Boat's Lament

Akseli_Gallen-Kallela_Lake_Keitele_1905

Sauna Girl

Swan of Tuonela

Waves

Biography Information:

http://www.kansallisbiografia.fi/english/?id=3194

Photos of the artist: https://www.flickr.com/photos/gallen-kallelanmuseo

Home Now

with cousin Maria and second cousins in Järvenpää

At the Railway Station in Helsinki

A Journal Entry: Dec 8

Home now. The Finnish language recedes as the plane carries me west. The flight of eight hours, to Rejkavik, Iceland for an hour layover and then onward over the tip of Greenland, the arctic, Hudson Bay and Canada. The flight makes the sun never set until we're down in Minneapolis and then it's dark. I grew up in the Finnish language and it recedes like a tide. I have been traveling many years away, and I have been traveling many years toward this question of home.

Going to Finland is like going to my grandmother's home. My grandparents and my parents are long gone, having passed when I was much younger.  I'm not sure what I should do or where I should be.

Meanwhile, we are at the airport. We check baggage, get our boarding passes, go through security, and walk through and past merchandise. Last chance to buy! Duty free! Snacks! I find a bathroom in the Helsinki airport that is for children. The toilet is miniature.  At the Kiasma museum, and at several public places, I have seen children's potty chairs in the bathrooms.  It is so kind of the country to think of their children and make places for them. I have never seen a bathroom like this in America. Because I can't find the adult bathroom, I use the tiny one, fast. It was urgent.

At the boarding call, we line up and walk up the ramp through the tube into the plane. I can't quite stand upright between the rows, but must lean sideways as I walk. The person behind me is very sick with a horrible cough. Meals on the plane now cost 14 Euros. Earphones are 4 Euros. Non-alcohol beverages are free. The passengers are trying to read, trying to watch a movie, trying to sleep, or trying to get over the sleeping passenger blocking them from the aisle while stewardesses are trying to sell merchandise from carts that block those wanting to walk down the aisle to the bathroom. I am trying not to be sick.

A reverse culture shock: The American media feels like a bombardment. I can't bear watching the news or on social media, the rants, preachings, images of terrorism, guns, Trump, atrocities. Maybe the foreign language has been protecting me from knowing all this. All of the news is flooding my mind now and I am ill.  Downtown Minneapolis is much too corporate. When I walk between the hotel and a restaurant, I wonder where are the children, the old people, the dogs? All I can see are people who look like they are in their thirties, and they are dressed for corporate jobs.  They walk mostly in the skywalks, and on the sidewalk, I encounter mostly homeless people.

In Duluth, my house feels too full. There is too much stuff. I want empty rooms. I want only a desk, a chair, and a window. I want to look out of my window and see Finland.  It makes me sad not to hear the Finnish language.  On the internet, I google more residencies. I try to find an opportunity to get myself back.

I think about creating stories. Sometimes they only come during a transformation of the self, because of a transformation of the self. Is that possible? I ask myself.  One doesn't just tell a story, one must live through it.  One must enter and pour the self's compassion out among the characters. One must pour out the self completely. Then something new can arise.

But first, sleep.

Philip Apeloig and Roland Barthes' Fragments of a Lover's Discourse

At the Stedeljk Museum, I saw this work. Philip Apeloig recreated all of the individual pages of this Barthes' book, printed on cashmere and silk.  The text is not on the fabric. The white represents paragraphs, each page with different spacing and arrangement of lines on the page.

See more of his projects:
http://apeloig.com/