Myth of Arrival

Living, as I do now, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, I have begun to become interested in Dutch poetry. When I tell my friends I have moved to the west side of the state I am usually greeted with with reactions that hover between horror, dismay, disbelief and/or incredulity. I can understand this. Before I moved out here to the Third Coast (what someone once described to me as the west side of the state) I was sure it was a barren wasteland, devoid of poetry, old school Democrats and/or independent thought.

Luckily for all of us, I have discovered some poetry. So let me share the fruits of my research (almost all of which has nothing to do with the greater Grand Rapids area). In no particular order here is a list of Dutch poets who have caught my attention:

Wikipedia has a wonderful list of Dutch writers and poets of note.

We shall start with Anne Frank, perhaps the most renowned and discussed Dutch writer I can think of; I hope one day to visit her museum.

Gerbrand Adriaensz Bredero (1585-1618), a poet who wrote mainly sonnets [!] and a dramatist of comedies. His work describes the seamy side of life in Amsterdam.

Jotie T'Hooft (1956 - 1977) was a Flemish Belgian neo-romantic poet.

Ida Gerhardt (1905 - 1997), a Dutch poet of a post-symbolist tradition. She wrote poems on the nature of her homeland and was also a translator of Lucretius and Virgil.

Hadewijch, a 13th century poet and mystic, living in the Duchy of Brabant.

Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft (1581-1647), a historian, poet and dramatist. Wikipedia says, "His poetry was of high standard as well. He introduced French and Italian lyricism into Dutch poetry."

The Netherlands also gave us the man who coined the term kinderen zijn hinderen (roughly translated as "children are a nuisance"), Jacob Cats (1577-1660), a poet, famous for his moralistic writings.

And finally Silvio Alberto (Tip) Marugg, who died last year, "a Dutch-Antillian writer and poet of Venezuelan/Swiss heritage … his style is best characterized as a variation on magic realism. Tip Marugg has also written several poems in literary magazines as well as his book of poems Afschuw van Licht … and a Dikshonario Erotiko; a dictionary of all words with an erotic meaning used in Papiamentu."

This raised the question of whether there is any Dutch poetic presence that can be felt on the Internet as well?

Trolling about I found Mark van Bee has an interesting article on translating Dutch poetry at his blog, Dutch Perspective.

The author of Generation Ex Files has posted her first poem written in Dutch.

OgenDicht/EyesClosed describes itself as "a weblog for modern English and Dutch poetry and proze."

NoDirectOn (not: NoDirection) is a literary blog based in the Netherlands.

My friend Gonda, who calls Gelderland home, helped me with this translation of my poem Soft, Pulpy Parts:

Neem mijn borst in gedachten, mijn tepels in tepelhof,
Neem er een tussen je tanden. Trek nu.
Wat verwacht je? Niemand zuigt
aan mannentieten. Geen gehijg door je pijnlijke
kussen. Deze ringen zijn alleen maar dat; ruw doordringend
metaal door zachte, weke delen. In dit geval,
mijn zachte, weke delen. Mijn stomme, vettige
tepels; alle sensaties zijn dood (alle gevoel is dood).Je kunt
elke ring door mijn overhemd vinden. De verontwaardiging van deze
dode uiteinden, zenuwen die niet kunnen voelen, is geen zegen,
jouw kus en draai. Geef me pijn, een lange kus
om opnieuw het vlees tot leven te brengen. Alle verse
woede van dit metaal in mijn vlees.

Thank you, Gonda, you are wonderful!

"Orpheus Naming the Parts" ZJC (2007)

I must thank my friend from Ituzaingo, Argentina, Queenie Damned, who sent me this fabulous Spanish translation of the poem Naming the Parts.

Thank you ever so much! You are wonderful!

Quién sabe lo que siente uno directo antes de impacto?
¿Dicha Negra? ¿La lujuria más aburrida? ¿La angustia del diablo
en la encrucijada? ¿Risa? Desperdicios a actuar
como sé- ese no es mi trabajo. Desperdicios
a escribir lo que conozco. Ése no es mi trabajo.
Trabajo con los vivos. Con este mawkish
mundo he nombrado en ser. Esta macabra
tarea de nombrar toda la parte. ¿Por qué desearía
saber yo como será que fallezca? ¿Podría afirmar que no sera
de manera rápida? ¿brutal? Quién puede decir menos?
¿Quién puede decir cómo me sentiré? Quién puede decir más?
Me levantaré, muriendo, pelo salvaje en llama?
¿Dejaré mi alma perdida en un yermo sin rumbo?
¿un lugar para el cual no tenemos nombre?

I can understand my poetic grandparents of the 1920s and 1930s wanting to throw off the mantle of Formal poetry; let's face it, after Romanticism the idea that perhaps rhyming poetry had gotten a bit stale, that forms for forms sake did not make the best verse was, I am sure, a revolutionary idea. Why not chuck the whole thing out the window and start over again? Why bother rhyming at all? World War II was looming in Europe and perhaps the poets of West had good reason to believe no one was going to survive. Why not break a few rules before it was too late?

I suppose doomsayers, like many types of poetry, get their day in the sun, become popular and then are shunted aside for the next depressing thing when whatever it is they claimed failed to materialize. I bring this up because there are people out in our world who have been making rather outrageous claims right now — “the Death of Irony,” “the End of Postmodernism,” “Kill the Villanelle” — and perhaps from their point of view all that might be true, regardless of any validity found among the rest of us.

In his Introduction to the anthology, American Sonnets, David Bromwich illustrates this by pointing out that just because a handful of people say it's the end of a form (or the world) does not necessarily make it so. Musing about the giant explosion in creativity seen in the beginning of the 20th Century, he writes:

… Early in the last century, there was a crisis of belief in conventional forms, which made poets and critics think hard about why a tradition like the sonnet should persist. Responding to this situation in “Reflections on Vers Libre” (1917), T. S. Eliot observed that modern poets could renew old genres such as mock-epic even as they burned through more recently favored modes like the naturalist novel. His prognosis was uncertain. “We only need the coming of a satirist,” Eliot guessed, “to prove that the heroic couplet has lost none of its edge since Dryden and Pope laid it down,” but other forms were in direr straits: “As for the sonnet I am not so sure.” Newness was not the determiner of value, for Eliot; of vers libre he remarked “it is the battle cry of freedom, and there is no freedom in art.” But with his well-earned skepticism, he almost persuaded himself that the sonnet was dead. (xxxvii - xxxiix)

And for some time Eliot has appeared correct. Vers libre, also known as Free verse, has held sway in American academia for many years now. It is not necessarily a bad thing when something once seen as radical, a fresh idea, is now canonized by the establishment, I suppose. But, in the same way that once the dominate culture finds out about something — be it hip hop, jazz, Abstract art or Robert Mapplethorpe — whatever sting that Avant-garde idea possessed tends to disappear rather quickly.

Again, just because the sting is gone now does not mean we should get rid of it. Why suggest, as Eliot did, that we need to get rid of a whole form simply because the artists of our time might not have the creative skills to do right by it? To make a claim that any form — regardless of the banal work turned out by a thousand years of talentless hacks — should be considered “dead” is either asinine or egotistical. Perhaps you, Mr. Eliot, do not have the skill to breath new life into a certain form, but why ruin it for the rest of us?

I write sonnets for one reason only; they are a lot of fun. So is Free verse. So are Villenelles. A form of poetry is just that; a shape that allows a poet to do certain things. To blame a form for those who curse or champion it is just as silly as dismissing once edgy poets like Ginsberg or Bukowski simply because they are being taught in academia now. Perhaps right now the sting in certain forms is gone, but given enough time and creativity it will be back.

First I bought a shoot of red bamboo, less
than a foot, and took down the eel-like blade
with the gap jaw handbone. I must confess
it took a day to carve them. I'm afraid
three was all I could master. Then I found
the old clay pot fashioned out of nightshade
and blood. I filled it and then lit a round
fire down low. I carved a question and laid
it on a wood scrap, set it to blaze: who
is out there? The fires crackled until
A.M.E.X.Q. was spelled. What blithesome
spirit are you, love? Next: I wait for you.
My last bamboo cutting was prayer: when will
you come? Hurry spirit – when will you come?

…

Work Cited

Bromwich, David (ed.) American Sonnets. New York: Library of America. (2007)

"old woman & cat" (2007)

Did I mention last Monday I was involved in a head-on collision that destroyed my car and banged up my knee? I didn't? The good news is no one was hurt, not even the person who ran a stop sign on the icy road as I was entering the intersection … well, no one was hurt except for the knee.

Who knows what one feels right before impact?
Black Bliss? Dullest lust? The Devil's anguish
at the Crossroads? Laughter? Rubbish to act
like I know – that is not my job. Rubbish
to write that I know. That is not my job.
I work with the living. With this mawkish
world I've named into being. This macabre
task to name all the part. Why would I wish
to know how I might perish? Could I claim
it won't be quick? brutal? Who can say less?
Who can tell how I'll feel? Who can say more?
Will I will rise, dying, wild hair a flame?
Will I leave my soul lost in a pathless
wilderness? a place we have no name for?

Imagine my dismay at finding out that the paws of a new born red fox are not yellow after all but black. I learned this after I had spent all day trying to get the colors in the fingers just so. I played around with the ideas that maybe I could get finger tips to look black but all that ended up happening was I looked like I had big blobs for fingers. Not exactly the effect I was hoping for.

Rise up. Rise up. Rise up, my desire.
Tell me your sad, bad woes. This love expands
like a slow burst. Flame. I am all fox fire.
All flesh oracle. Desire commands
that I divine soft-line grooves in your flesh.
Let me touch your woes. Let these fox-pup hands
read you; melted fat like crushed horseflesh fresh
from the tanner. Mad; the tale of Swamplands
Gal at the Crossroad with the White Devil.
Sad; dune grass piercing skulls in the black sands
of a beach. Gospel. We all have gospel
hymns to tell. There is no truth that demands
this, but still, what the hell — let these fox-pup
hands touch you. Rise up. Rise up, hell! Rise up!