Archive for November, 2007

Die Nacht

Die Nacht ist eine stille alte Schnecke,
die langsam sich die Tür öffnet
von sein Heimat, der Milchstraße,
sein schleimigen Weg folgend über
unsere zerknitterte Dächern.

Der Test Bild des Mondes hängt hier
Zwischen Sterne, die Bausteine sind
und Dachziegel die, zwischen uns,
scheitern als Kastagnetten.

Aber das sind die Verdienste
von Träume und Ziegel, dass sie
Scheitern können, eben wie unsere größte Lücke,
Die Nacht, die zu immens und Krückig ist
für menschliche Absichten.

Today I have been toying around with the idea to construct an alchemical method of poetry analysis.

Alchemy is the art to construct gold by combining elements. There are five elements in Alchemy, the fifth one (‘spirit’) only manifesting when the four basic elements are combined in such manner that they make the right reaction.

The four basic elements are these:

Fire: the actions in the poem
Water: the impact the poem has on the senses or feelings
Air: the thought patterns and sounds in the poem
Earth: the rhythm and the connection of the poem with material reality in its broad sense.

Now, every poet can combine these elements into a formula that if put in the right way produces gold. So how is this useful in poetry building or analysis?

First of all the important thing is to look if a poem does or does not already produce this ‘gold’. If it does analysis becomes sort of irrelevant and the piece is there mostly to be experienced.

If the poem does not produce ‘gold’ we have to look at it and see what’s wrong with the elements. Some poems might have too much air, for example. While it is perfectly possible to produce a poem that produces gold from just air, if the gold is absent we have to see what’s wrong with the element used as is.

The traditional way of seeing things would be that a poem starts with fire. The fire is not just the actions within the poem itself, but also the scared fire that drives the poet to write the piece down. The fire gives an irreproducible quality of necessity to a work. When it is absent, the poem runs a high risk of either becoming too watery (emotional), too airy (shuffling or puzzling with words) or too earthy (describes reality in a rhythmic way).

There are lots of poems out there that lack fire. Some of them are still very good, but lots of them aren’t and often it is precisely the lack of fire that is the problem. A good example of a ‘fiery’ poet is Majakovski. His entire opus is a burning flame of fire, action, blazing imagery. Good example of a poet that lacks fire: Donald Justice, for example. Very impressionistic, stylized still poetry. Lots of water, air and earth but very little fire. Still produces lots of gold, though, just to remind us that one does not have to combine all 4 elements to produce it.

That raises the question as to why this method would be interesting at all. For if one can produce this ‘gold’ even with a single element (although that is very hard) then why all this banter about combining different elements and secret formula to produce something inexplainable in the first place?

Well, for one thing: it brings a new light to poetry analysis. While it is true that one can produce gold with just one or two elements it is obvious that most poetry combines all 4 and that it is far easier to produce gold when one combines all 4 elements. When a poem fails to produce gold it’s interesting to see where the elements fail, no matter how many of them are used.

Does the poem fail because it lacks the necessity of fire or blazing imagery? Does it fail because it lacks the quality to move the senses or feelings of the reader? Does it fail because it does not have sounds or thoughts that connect it to the 4th space, earth? Or does it fail because it merely describes reality as we all know it in a rhythmic way?

As such, I think an alchemical method of poetry analysis is rather useful and perhaps a more interesting way of looking a poetry than some other methodologies.

Dutch poet Martijn Benders as of today refuses to write his blog ‘Loewak’ in Dutch out of sympathy with Dutch writer Arnon Grunberg. Grunberg wrote in the Belgian newspaper ‘De Morgen’ today that he refuses to attend any Dutch literary events in the future. Grunberg, who lives in New York, is one of the few Dutch expats who made a heroic attempt to keep his interest in appearing on Dutch literary events and parties alive. Many other Dutch expats, be it writers or poets, have long since given up the charade but Grunberg has been the pioneer Dutch party expat until this day, when he finally gave up his attempts to attend parties on the other side of the globe just for the hell of it.

We Dutch expats welcome Grunberg into our ranks but we also want to express our disappointment that Grunberg, as a disgruntled expat, continues to write his work in Dutch. We feel that a true pioneer would assimilate and refuse to work in a language that is mostly being utilized to inflate something known as the ‘Dutch literary ego’. A true revolutionary, whether he owns a sandwich shop or not, would never bow to the restrictions set by his birth or circumstances. Even if Grunberg continues to write his books in Dutch we feel that he owes it to his own principles to at least write his Blog in English, as I’ve started to do now.

Oh, and I also want to express my agreement with Grunsberg that Rita ‘The mole’ Verdonk does not belong at a literary event. It was sheer travesty to use an event like that to promote a rather flimsy and absurd political agenda.

The fourth part of my upcoming poetry volume ‘Karavaserai’ will not deal with the crosslines between north and south, as I wrote earlier. I’ve decided today that the 4th part of the book will deal with the crosslines between macrocosmos and microcosmos, the inside and the outside.

Pruning weeds in hell

The sick man sees the wooden faces
of friends pass in his dream. He sees
a horse with half raised eyes dance
over phials and tubes, urinating in his tub.
It speaks with the voice of his wife.

You became a horse, he says.
Go to the white monastery, light a candle.
Pray for me then bite the fuse
with your rustproof teeth.

The horse shrugs its schoulders.
In the garden a priest appears
cursing and straining every nerve
with thick yellow rubber gloves
as if he’s pruning weeds in hell.

Then he smashes the window
with his cast-iron crucifix of silver.
The man feels a lot better, now.

The wooden face of a friend appears
chewing a fuse. Then the dark turns
its bedridden grimace to the light.

M.H.Benders, 09-11-2007
Based on the poem ‘Sickness’ by Nikolai Zabolotski

Ik ben nu fulltime aan ‘Karavanserai’ aan het werken, vandaar dat de postfrequentie hier niet zo hoog zal liggen.
De eerste 3 delen zijn nu min of meer af. Die zien er nu zo uit:

Deel 1 is een poging het universum samen te vatten.
Deel 2 is een poging de lijnen tussen oost en west in kaart te brengen.
Deel 3 is een poging het universum te reduceren tot getallen.

Aan deel 4 ga ik nu werken. Hierin worden de lijnen tussen noord en zuid in kaart gebracht.

Ik verwacht rond Kerstmis het hele boek te kunnen inleveren.