Finnish Poets

On the day of Finland's centennial celebration, December 6, 2017, we had a celebration in Duluth at the Depot. Over 600 people attended to appreciate Finland's culture and independence. We also enjoyed good food, visual art, music. Many Finnish immigrants settled in Minnesota. My grandparents arrived in the early 1900s.  At the event, I read these poems as way to acknowledge the sources of inspiration that continue to feed my writing.  

Eeva-Liisa Manner  

ASSIMILATION 

I will show you a way 

that I have travelled. 

If you come 

If you come back some day 

searching for me 

do you see how everything shifts 

a little every moment 

and becomes less pretentious 

and more primitive 

(like pictures drawn by children 

or early forms of life: 

the soul's alphabet) 

you will come to a warm region 

it is soft and hazy 

but then I will no longer be me, 

but the forest. 

_________

MOTHER TONGUES by Kirsti Simonsuuri

There came a distant cool loneliness

without the hell of others

I spoke alone in all tongues

I forged keys to secret languages:

fresh water, Latin

sweet strawberry, Finnish.

My silence was as deep

as once in the womb.

__________

GROUND-ICE by Helvi Juvonen

My joy is made of ground-ice.

It does not melt.

A vein of water runs deep,

inexhaustible,

the spring shimmers

over my silver ice

clear as glass.

You see my ice.

Do not touch.

After all it is cold,

spring water.

Look.

You see a human face,

you see your own,

a good face.

IN THIS LIFE by Helvi Juvonen

I tell of an enduring summer,

streams that do not run out,

trees that do not shed their leaves,

land on which grass does not wilt.

In that land, the land of which I sing,

ravens fly, bringing food.

In that land, the land of which I sing,

there is always a hand for a human hand.

My friends, the chosen few,

I’m telling you

of truth’s enduring summer.

From Pohjajäätä [‘Ground-ice’], 1952)

_______

Poem by Risto Rasa 

Niin kuin aalto uittaa aallon 

yli valtameren, 

niin selviydymme mekin 

toinen toisiamme tukien. 

Just as one wave carries another wave

Across the ocean,

So we, too, survive

One supporting the other. 

_________

Älä elämää pelkää’ by Kaarlo Sarkia

Don’t be afraid of life,

don’t shut out its beauty.

Invite it to sit by your fire,

or should your hearth expire,

to meet it outside is your duty.

Do not ever say:

this is mine alone.

Drink from life’s cup

and once again give its pain up.

If you never beg to own,

the world’s riches are yours today.

Be bold, stake all on one card:

ahead you’ll always see death’s gate unbarred.

– – –

Älä elämää pelkää,

älä sen kauneutta kiellä.

Suo sen tupaasi tulla

tai jos liettä ei sulla,

sitä vastaan käy tiellä,

älä käännä sille selkää.

Älä koskaan sano:

‘Tämä on iäti minun.’

Elon maljasta juovu,

taas siitä, jos tarpeen, kivutta luovu.

On maailman rikkaus sinun,

kun mitään et omakses ano.

Elä pelotta varassa yhden kortin:

näet aina avoinna kuoleman portin.

Translated by David McDuff

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/