Rating: 3.5* of five

I've said multiple times in various places that I continue to challenge my reading preferences to prevent them from becoming insurmountable prejudices. I keep trying different, sometimes well-known and other times unknown, YA novels, comic books graphic novels, and even *shudder* poetry *retch*.

I got this PDF from Open Letter, for which I thank them very kindly; until last week, I had no way to read it because I was solely in the Kindleverse. Then I got...hosanna in the highest!...a Galaxy Tab so I could spread the wear on my laptop out a bit. (GREAT for streaming!) It made reading this slim, bilingual edition of Danish poet Asta Olivia Nordenhof's very, very weird poems a breeze.

What was not a breeze was trying to figure out what the hell the poet's talking about:

on the way to the ocean, we pick elderberries

all the love i have can fit in an elderberry

someone should have taken away her meekness

my mother

i should have said:

no one has the right to destroy you

all those fuckheads

youre meticulous with your makeup before we leave for the school program

forget it

just forget it

theres no reason to be kind to anyone unkind

forget it

no one has the right to demand that you be kind to the unkind

No, I didn't remove or forget punctuation; no, I didn't deliberately add spaces or line-breaks; this is how the PDF presented itself to me. I swear to you that, in my quest not to die above the neck before I do below it, I am not looking for examples to confirm my biases...I accepted this offer of a PDF because I'd never heard of the poet in any capacity and knew absolutely nothing about her.

What the actual fuck is she talking about there?! Her abused mother? Okay, I get that; but unless I'm utterly insensible to poetry, that is far from all she's talking about...is it? isn't it? gawd I want an elderberry, where's the jam.

So far, so bad.

But then I hit something that made me squirm, flinch, and regard the page with new, and increasing respect:

thomas, his room is small, he has to sit on the edge of the bed

hes just home from iraq

he asks us to smell the sweater he was wearing when he was shot

id rather not have to look at hi. id rather not have to look at you

when we head home dulled by menthol-licorice vodka

tomorrow too we will wake up and be witnesses. helpful. silent
 
 
on the way down to the drugstore to buy hair dye.

It's excerpted from a longer poem. I was ready to just write off my reading experience, despite the fact that I'm quite fond of several poets (hi Sven!) and would never, ever go out of my way to hurt them, as just another dreary exercise in obfuscatory self-gratification before my befuddled old-man eyes. That poem, especially that fragment of it, in such simple and direct language (kudos to you, Translator Nied), bashes the snot out of complacent and dismissive attitudes towards the lived experiences of others. The poet's choice of her tenuous connection's demand for sharing a reality no one else in his life, confined to a narrow and solitary space, would ever once think of requesting. I don't think anyone accepted it, either. But the urgency of the demand...it is like being slapped backhand by a bigger, stronger person, and done with real rage...outrage, is there a superlative I don't know about? I need it.

Moseying on through the Danishness of the alternating pages, I was utterly and finally transfixed:

so we sit at home seeing dead women

maybe hanged in the attic with barbed wire, maybe drenched in honey

then people have to hurry and find the creep who did it before he kills

another woman

and drenches her in honey and has sex with her post-mortem

what the fucks going on

better for people who grew up with violence and sex to turn themselves

into saints and be killed
 
 
that way, than for all of us jointly to take on the deeply entrenched

hatred of women

crime shows get off too easy
everyone gets off too easy

So. Yeah. This is why I don't watch TV. I binge on shows via streaming services when I'm already sure they don't use women/queers/children/Black folks as victims, or if they do, it's reparatively handled (revenge stories satisfy me). This is why most "thrillers" are off my list. I really, really don't want that imagery in my head...and here's a poet, of all people (sorry Jean), boiling my angry disgust into two viciously stabby lines:

crime shows get off too easy
everyone gets off too easy

Exactly. And this, my olds, is why I continue to challenge myself to read genres I dislike. There is, not always but often, something to take away the curse of isolation from solitude. ( )

Vi bliver ældre dag for dag, men vi opdager det i glimt. Jeg kan huske, da alle spillere på fodboldlandsholdet var ældre end mig – nu er de alle sammen yngre, og debutanterne er som regel født efter jeg gik i gymnasiet. Sådan er det også med unge forfattere – de er ikke bare yngre end mig, deres formende oplevelser er også nogle andre end mine. Det slog mig, da jeg læste Nordenhofs digtsamling fra 2013, hvor Den store Badedag – som jeg husker, da den kom og vist endda så i biografen – er blevet til sentimental onsdagsunderholdning.

Man skal selvfølgelig passe på ikke at gøre for meget ud af generationserfaringerne, og hele debatten om Generation Etik virker lidt som et forsøg på at skabe kunstige modsætninger ved at puste forskelligheder mere op, end der egentlig er grundlag for. God litteratur handler om det almenmenneskelige, og det gælder i høj grad også Det nemme og det ensomme.

Der er en særlig sårbarhed og ensomhed i digtene. Begge forældre er døde tidligt, og det er tunge erfaringer, der skal bearbejdes. Der er smukke erindringsglimt, men de er som regel hægtet op på billeder af død og tab. F.eks. dette fine digt om en fest for nogle år siden:

”jeg forsøger at komme i tanke om det parcelhus hvor du boede i vanløse
der var en mindre tilbygning hvor festen blev holdt, en sløv tunge
…
da vi sad og afventede at gæsterne skulle komme. når nogen bevægede sig hen over gruset i indkørslen
der var en der fortalte mig at du er død af en overdosis
det lugter af deodorant og smøreost når jeg tænker på at du ikke findes
…” (s. 43)

Som det fremgår, bruger Nordenhof af princip ikke store bogstaver – men hvad der skal lægges i det, tør jeg ikke sige.

Digtene emmer af sårbarhed, men der er også indignation. Hvorfor skal nogen leve i familier, der er præget af vold? Hvorfor skal nogle være tvunget til at prostituere sig selv for at tjene til livet? Hvorfor ser vi i samfundet så meget ned på dem, der ikke har et arbejde? Det stærke engagement og den kritiske holdning til vores samfund brænder igennem.

Asta Maria Nordenhof er bestemt en stemme, som jeg glæder mig til at høre mere til. Om hendes generation faktisk er udtryk for en helt ny etik, betyder ikke så meget, så længe digtene i sig selv er værd at læse. Og det er de. ( )