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/