Archive for June, 1998

Sunweave

Issue 2/1998 | Archives online, Fiction, poetry

Poems From Aurinkopunos (‘Sunweave’, WSOY, 1997). Introduction by Jyrki Kiiskinen

Evening in Manhattan

the mechanism clicks
in the past I suppose it was called
falling in love but now we’re expected to merely
note that the cogs of chance have revolved into a propitious position
chemicals catch fire for exciting actions
under the street old fire moves under the sewers
maybe an alligator

they are calm creatures but we of course aren’t
we bounce off of each other into each other
flee from earth’s death the rising motion
the forest grows into skyscrapers petrifies
into the rings of suns More…

Simple things

Issue 2/1998 | Archives online, Authors, Reviews

Among the poetry published in Finland in 1997, Jyrki Kiiskinen identifies four voices that continue to reverberate long after their books are put down. Markku Paasonen is one of the four poets he discusses

‘I did not choose the cause, the cause chose me,’ wrote Pentti Saarikoski in the Sixties, when he thought he had found his life’s purpose in communism. Thirty years later, Markku Paasonen in his first collection Aurinkopunos (‘Sunweave’) writes: ‘I did not choose; the sea but the sea chose.’ More…

Slow, beautiful snow

Issue 2/1998 | Archives online, Authors, Reviews

Among the poetry published in Finland in 1997, Jyrki Kiiskinen identifies four voices that continue to reverberate long after their books are put down. Sirkka Turkka is one of the four poets he discusses

Sirkka Turkka welds demotic expressions, Biblical overtones, and Finnish pop songs together like a Jesus hanging out with publicans and prostitutes. She does this quite seamlessly, creating a lively verbal landscape: ‘Poetry / is completely senseless, like a mind / open all the time, babbling.’ But as it moves along in its self-identification with a farrago of phrases and sayings, the babble turns dense and multidimensional. The reader of Nousevan auringon talo (‘The house of the rising sun’) is invited to watch the construction and continuous renewal of an identity. More…

The house of the rising sun

Issue 2/1998 | Archives online, Fiction, poetry

Poems from Nousevan auringon talo (The house of the rising sun’, Tammi, 1997). Introduction by Jyrki Kiiskinen

Closeness. License to kill. And to go on living
         becomes impossible.
 When you see a waterfowl’s eyes, if you see them
         in the dark, that is the right distance.

Now the fire power of our forces consists of infantry arms.
         You are hard ammo exercises, controlled
 regression, kiss of a porcupine, flower
                   from the great gardener's garden, who
                          shall be killed nevertheless.
         The one who in every piss-stained jail cell tries
                   to inch his own death forward a little.
*  More...

Death, the Stranger

Issue 2/1998 | Archives online, Authors, Reviews

Among the poetry published in Finland in 1997, Jyrki Kiiskinen identifies four voices that continue to reverberate long after their books are put down. Rakel Liehu is one of the four poets he discusses

Rakel Liehu takes her walks in the garden of life and death, with not even a low hedge between her and the realm of the dead. We live in a world of absurd suffering, one that Liehu aptly names the ‘circular (saw) circus.’ We see a woman striving for balance in a splendid storm of words.

Skorpionin sydän (‘The scorpions heart’) finds much of its inspiration in the mythology of ancient Egypt, not least in its physical relationship to death. Liehu’s strong woman is closely attached to life: worms perform a symphony in her innards, and her ovaries are as punctual as the stationmaster’s watch. More…

Poems

30 June 1998 | Fiction, poetry

Sometimes

Sometimes the river that gave birth to me
Whispers in my ear. And while the harsh hand
Of day keeps at me, my river
Sounds like birds walking on the leaves,
And the waters speak to me in Finnish:
Ikävä on olla kartanolla –
I am alone and waiting in the yard…. More…

The scorpion’s heart

Issue 2/1998 | Archives online, Fiction, poetry

Poems From Skorpionin sydän (‘The scorpion’s heart’, WSOY, 1997). Introduction by Jyrki Kiiskinen

Earth’s hot womb brought to a boil
the grain ripens

among your golden chaff
and sharp awns
you walk and listen

Death
        The Stranger
here it found a place, 

its dark apartments glittered
 the dead
perfumed, trembled

and now
through the small cremation hatch
you see
see how the coffin thunderously
flares, disappears
in elemental fire

*

More…

Night city

30 June 1998 | Authors

Stephen Kuusisto

Stephen Kuusisto

The German poet Novalis wrote: ‘Daylight has got limits and hours, but the hegemony of Night penetrates through space and through time.’ In effect he says that the night is always with us, even when the sun is out. The lines always bring me back to Helsinki, the city where night permeates every wall and cobblestone.

I first came to Helsinki as a three-year-old boy, wrapped up in a heavy wool coat. My father, an American Finn, had been invited to the University of Helsinki as a Fulbright scholar. While my father taught courses in political science I practiced and perfected a child’s insomnia and remained energetically awake during hours of the day and night. I lived in a perpetual state of shadow-sleep and never closed my eyes. As a result my emerging brain absorbed Helsinki the way a night-blooming flower takes in the moon. More…

The daughter

30 June 1998 | Fiction, Prose

A short story from Meddelande (‘Messages’, Schildts, 1998)

Mother, hello! It’s me … can’t hear you very well. I rang a while ago, but maybe you were having your nap?

(Cheerfully) Yes, of course, you can take a nap whenever you like. I can always phone back.

But Mother, listen to what I’m saying now: that’s the last thing I want you to do. It’s awful if you’re just sitting there by the phone, waiting and waiting. You mustn’t do that. I can phone later when I phone, you know that. How’re things?

But that’s good. Great. And you’ve made your evening cup of tea? More…

Paradise apple

Issue 2/1998 | Archives online, Authors, Reviews

Among the poetry published in Finland in 1997, Jyrki Kiiskinen identifies four voices that continue to reverberate long after their books are put down. Pentti Holappa is one of the poets he discusses

Pentti Holappa’s collection Älä pelkää (‘Do not be afraid’) is a mausoleum for murdered love. The poems speak from a juncture between present and past, in the obscurity of their own consciousness: ‘As soon as light penetrates the ambiguity of being, / the fruit falls outside the bounds of paradise.’ More…

Do not be afraid

Issue 2/1998 | Archives online, Fiction, poetry

Poems from Älä pelkää (‘Do not be afraid’, WSOY, 1997). Introduction by Jyrki Kiiskinen

Travel preparations

Late Friday night. Strange noises in the yard, someone
bangs on the door to the next stairway. Electricity hums.

I have just come back from the U.S. and France, from Sweden too.
On their channels, people laugh. They are having fun.

They are, nowadays, strange, young, and handsome, each and every one.
We did not have that when I was young. We limped.

We did not talk. We stammered tortuous phrases
and, while embracing, were afraid to be seen.

We did embrace. We clung to one another, expecting
to drown alone in every ninth wave.

I know my place is not here where I am. I think, I try
to construct conclusions. Someone looks over my shoulder.

Slowly the universe was born out of my mother s womb.
I am not responsible for its sudden extinction. On a Friday night.

I let them rule, the beauties and young lovers. My ticket has been written.
it is ready. I have had my shots against fear. I have my passport.

Bulldog

No European he who does not every morning
put on a tie. This morning, European
as I am, I looked at myself in the mirror
and noted that, incontrovertibly, more
and more every day, I resemble a
sad bulldog. Who has ever seen a bulldog smile?
We know we were born into the wrong world,
born to struggle. My bloodshot eyes tell me
I would like nothing better than to bed down m the straw
with my adversary, the bull, and ponder the stars.

Paradise apple

Consciousness is anchored to dark matter
as are the swells to the ocean. It is a quality
of matter, darkness glittering darkness. No need for words,
the overarching multidimensional web is one seamless
thought, not verifiable by observations or signs.
As soon as light penetrates the ambiguity of being,
the fruit falls outside the bounds of paradise.

The first sense

For another moment, you are incomprehensibly close,
you are mental image, you are voice, almost scent.
Only touch is missing, the most elementary of sensations
but precisely the one with which God tested the clay
with which the worm knows itself
with which there is hurt in torture and love,
and with which I miss your retreating appearance,
your tender groin, your rough hand.

(Written after a telephone conversation.)

Translated by Anselm Hollo

Among horses

30 June 1998 | Authors, Interviews

Tua Forsström

Photo: Cato Lein

‘Now it’s really damned difficult to know whether these poems will be close to the reader, or strange,’ Tua Forsström said a couple of days before the publication last autumn of her collection Efter att ha tillbringat en natt bland hästar (‘After spending a night among horses’).

Her previous collection, Parkerna (‘The parks’), published five years ago, found its readers and swept the board of literary prizes. The new poems, too, come close to the reader; the book’s Finland-Swedish publisher has sold out and the prize-boards have been swept again, including the Nordic Council Prize for Literature.

Writing the new collection took five years, as was the case with Parkerna. Tua Forsström writes slowly: nine collections in a quarter of a century. Her first collection, En dikt om kärlek och annat (‘A poem about love and other things’), appeared in 1972. More…

Talking to Andrei

30 June 1998 | Fiction, poetry

Poems from Efter att ha tillbringat en natt bland hästar (‘After spending a night among horses’, Söderströms, 1997)

The snow is whirling over the roses of the inner courtyard

The snow is whirling over the roses of the inner courtyard.
Did not bring boots or scarf with me, leaf
through books, don’t know what to do with all this light!
You would not approve of the colours.
It’s too impressive, Andrei Arsenyevich, there is too
much, too much of everything!
You swapped your wings for an air balloon, a clumsy
contraption twined together from ropes and rags, I remember it well.
Earlier, I had a lot and didn’t remember. Hard
to keep to the point. Hard to keep to the point.
Hope to get back. Hope to get back to the principle
of the wings. Fact remains: the cold preserved
the rose garden last night. ‘The zone is a zone, the zone is life,
and a person may either perish or survive as
he makes his way through this life. Whether he manages it or
not depends on his sense of own worth.’* A hare
almost leapt into the vestibule here at the Foundation,
mottled against the snow; in the hare’s diary it’s October, after all.
You seem to be in quite a malignant humour,
and it is possible that none of this interests you.
On the other hand, you quite often complain yourself.
I’m writing because you are dead and because I woke up
last spring in my hotel facing the street in Benidorm to that wonderful
high twittering. One ought not to constantly say sorry, one ought
not to constantly say thank you, one ought to say thank you. Lake Mälaren like lead down there. The rest is white and red. More…