Archive for the ‘Literature’ Category

Stop it, Ron.
Stop torturing my website it did
nothing wrong. It isn’t even a poem
just a bunch of digits
in decent form.

I know, I know
you’ve been on the barricades yourself
and you have thousands of precious books
on your shelves but that’s no excuse
so stop it, Ron, my website
is very strong anyway.

My website will never succumb.
So you better give it up, Ron.

If everyone did like you, if everyone
would cherrypick poetry
then nothing, nothing at all
would be new and you know it

so stop it, Ron, stop the debut
of yourself at the expense
of my website. Stop it. Now.

Martijn Benders, 05-08-2010

The Open Air Library on the highest mountain of Buyukada is once again open. Kerem aka Argos Libertos managed to open it again after the police forced him to shut it down last year but they were no match to his persistance. Kerem cured well from his jump from 3 high in the centre of Istanbul and could walk well again after being operated, first half year with help of a stick. His library has now signed works of dutch poets Arjen Duinker, Tonnus Oosterhoff, K.Schippers and Alfred Schaffer who by means of Bart van der Pligt were kind enough to donate books. When you’re in Istanbul you should surely stop by and please bring a book or two!

The Kazakhstan born graphic artist Serik Kulmeshkenov is one of the few artists that keeps the ex Libris craft alive, a special genre within the arts. Ex Libris are special book seals people use to personify their person book collection. The works of Serik Kulmeshkenov are excellent examples of why this craft should never disappear:

Ex libris Natalya Chebotar / size 90mm x 90mm, 2005.

Ex libris Sergey and Irina Khrapov / size 80mm x 105mm, 2008

Ex libris Paul Elliott / size 65mm x 82mm, 2008.

These and many more magnificent Ex libris works you can view at the website of Serik Kulmeshkenov. Every serious book collector should have such an emblem, in my opinion.

Dear members of the Bush administration,

Yesterday I read an article about the possibility that terrorists could use games like ‘World of Warcraft’ to communicate with each other and spread hidden messages about plans and attacks. This theory was vented by one Dr. Dwight Toavs of the ‘Defense University’ on a conference in Washington Tuesday. I was in shock after I read the article. It suddenly dawned upon me that Dr. Dwight Toavs was not only absolutely right: but that this was just the tip of the iceberg, and that, far-fetched as his theory seems, he has overlooked the most obvious communication avenue for terrorists: poetry.

As you might know a ‘poem’ is a piece of coded text in which the writers uses so-called ‘metaphors’ to hide the real message of the poem. That already makes it a very useful medium for terrorists, as they, using poetry, can conceal their true message by pretending the text is about something else. A terrorist might write a line like ‘Oh wavering flowers of the city, where it that the bees could honk and loom’ and what he would be really saying to his fellow jihadists is ‘Guys, go take a cap and bomb those buildings flat’.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Arabic poetry has seen a suspicious rise in recent years. But please, let’s not forget that these terrorists could use any sort of poetry to communicate their message: what about avant-garde, Flarf, language poetry? They are all suspect. Dr. Dwight Toavs is right and wrong: writing poetry is dirt cheap while playing WOW costs 14 bucks a month, let’s not forget that’s a months salary in Afghanistan! So we can safely conclude that poetry is the tool par excellence for terrorists to communicate their hidden messages.

And it doesn’t stop with contemporary poetry, oh no. Who says these terrorists aren’t secretly reading Shakespeare to each other in those caves in Tora Bora? What did the Lithuanian poet Henrikas Nagys really mean when he wrote ‘I was awakened by the whistling sound of pigeons wings and the flood of sunshine rising in my eyes’? Is there really any end to the vile possibilities of misuse one can imagine such tools to have? Clearly, any society that is serious about combatting terrorism must do something about poetry.

What can we do? It’s clear that we have to scan the entire literary opus of humanity for hidden terrorist messages. But only experts can do that: a regular CIA trainee will have no idea what these poems mean. Therefore I must propose that the US government employs all currently known poets, domestic or foreign, to scan contemporary and past poetry for messages that seem, well, suspect. It’s a gigantic operation but it’s for the sake of World Security. While Dr. Dwight Toavs from the ‘Defense University’ has a minor point I would want to suggest he stops wasting tax payers money playing World of Warcraft and instead focus on the real dangers, the world of poetry.

From Kafka in “Parables and Paradoxes”:

Since the Fall we have been essentially equal in our capacity to recognize good and evil; nonetheless it is just here that we seek to show our individual superiority. But the real differences begin beyond that knowledge. The opposite illusion may be explained thus: nobody can be content with the mere knowledge of good and evil in itself, but must endeavor as well to act in accordance with it. The strength to do so, however, is not likewise given him, consequently he must destroy himself trying to do so, at the risk of not achieving the necessary strength even then; yet there remains nothing for him but this final attempt. (That is moreover the meaning of the threat of death attached to eating the Tree of Knowledge; perhaps too it was the original meaning of natural death.) Now, faced with this attempt, man is filled with fear; he prefers to annul his knowledge of good and evil (the term, “the fall of man,” may be traced back to that fear); yet the accomplished cannot be annulled, but only confused. It was for this purpose that our rationalizations were created. The whole world is full of them, indeed the whole visible world is perhaps nothing more than the rationalization of a man who wants to find peace for a moment. An attempt to falsify the actuality of knowledge, to regard knowledge as a goal still to be reached.

The setup of this log allows me to post to it anywhere I go from my blackberry. At the moment I am sitting next to the seaside typing this. I can wander through istanbul and any moment I have an interesting idea just share it with the world. That’s principally what logging should be about – direct interaction with everything.Of course this means more typos and such will creep in – typing fast on a blackberry won’t produce perfect texts but the grammar fetishists will probably better look elsewhere anyway.

I hate journalists. The journalist, by default, sees you as an article. He doesn’t listen to what you say, doesn’t read what you write. Words, to him, are news items. He never reads anything, he scans, scans your words like a hunting dog would, looking for an exhausted rabbit. And when he finds the exhausted rabbit, usually an imaginary one, he parades it in front of an imaginary crowd as some sort of hunting trophy. The imaginary crowd cheers as the old dog carries the half-dead, imaginary rabbit to his doghouse, the newspaper.

You might think I write this because I got negative reviews. I didn’t. My book was launched last month and got about 7 reviews, 5 from people one would call ‘common readers’ and 2 from journalists. All reviews were positive. However, what really struck me as relevant: even though the reviews were ‘positive’ the reviews that were laundered with observation failures were never the reviews of the common readers, but rather those of the journalists. A ridiculous statement is a ridiculous statement, no matter if the statement is ‘positive’. It’s a really mind boggling phenomenon: I am supposed to be ‘happy’ with a bunch of terribly incorrect statements because the review as a whole would be ‘positive’. I’d much rather read a negative review with correct statements than a positive review with incorrect statements. Does that make me weird? Am I the last of the Mohicans?

Journalism is a disease. It’s a relatively new phenomenon, hardly a hundred years old. The basic operative: propaganda. It’s hardly possibly to comprehend the modern day world without becoming an expert in propaganda techniques. Most people do not understand this. They don’t understand that there is a ‘Guantanamo Bay’ because these people want there to be a ‘Guantanamo Bay’. They want us to have a certain image of them. Guantanamo bay is the exhausted, imaginary rabbit they parade in front of us because someone, somewhere, thinks it will be to their advantage if the world is terrified.

Propaganda, by definition, is a lie. It’s the smiling facade, the fake smirk on the face of the Eurovision singer who wants to look happy when he’s deadly nervous. Propaganda is a mask. It doesn’t matter what the mask says – it can be a happy mask, a terrifying mask, it makes no difference. It’s an attempt to manipulate impressions. The journalist creates masks out of words. It’s the mask-crafting guild of terror, preying upon our world.

I don’t care what sort of mask anyone would put upon my book. What an incredible insult to suppose one should be happy to see ones work wear some idiotic, smiling mask meant to lure some imaginative audience. I was very happy with the reviews of common readers. Their reviews might not be ‘professional’ but they were at least reviews. Real people reading a real book. That is, in these sort of times, something to be really thankful for.

There’s a discussion going on the Guardian site about the inclusion of female poets in the English canon, ignited by Frances Leviston, a member of good standing of the illustrious ‘Poetburo’ I’ve founded together with James Sheard. Of course my vows to the Poetburo compel me to come to Levistons defense. It’s the urgency of defending a comrade rather outweighing the painful male chauvinist tendency to be the rescuing knight, in this case, and I’m slightly disappointed that I’m the only member of the Poetburo so far that seems to have taken his vows seriously. Anyway, here’s the testament of my defense:

I think the whole discussion is somewhat silly, because it evades the essential point: that canons are on itself male forms of ordering reality. They are attempts at monopolizing literature – tribal manifestations based on the good old Ape Rock: the whole idea that anything should or shouldn’t be included there reinforces the whole idea rather than disband it. What person in his right state of mind would care about which monkey sits where; other than a few big publishers there’s really no one that’s being served by the monopolization of literature. One has to wonder why it’s always English Literature that seems keen on presenting itself this way: I hardly ever see any attempts of ‘forming canons’ in other language areas, including my own (Dutch). No one seems to bother, really. So what is it about English Literature that evokes this incredible urge to form ‘a canon’? I think that question is more relevant than any other one I’ve read so far.

The discussion can be read here

I have dreams and visions. Sometimes I hear weird voices. I don’t necessarily believe in anything I hear or witness. I regard myself as a scientist regards a piece of measuring equipment. The bottom line is: I ‘experienced’ something. I severely trained myself not to attach any conclusions or beliefs to any such ‘experience’. Let me give you some examples.

A visionary dream: I had a dream when my wife was just pregnant last year where I met this cute little girl near the sea. She took my hand, took me to the sea and washed my feet with the seawater. I looked at the sea and it was alive and vibrant with hundreds of colored, magical spirals. After she washed my feet the little girl disappeared into the sea. Suddenly I was in outer space, drifting between the planets. Very pleasant feeling.

This dream obviously meant that it was gonna be a girl, so I did actually believe that and it did come true.

Example of a vision: if you want to have ‘visions’ theres a technique you can use. it’s all about quieting the brain and bring it into a state of sleep without actually losing consciousness. There’s a certain ‘area’ where the consciousness must be focussed to produce the visions. It’s like some sort of inner antenna, which just functions when you know how to focus your awareness on it.

One shouldn’t attach any definite meanings to such visions. They can sometimes be rather overwhelming. The main trick is simply to stop the mind. This is in fact an extremely hard thing to do. I still struggle with it every day.

A few months ago I had a vision where I was watching some deer graze in a forest, like white deer. It was an incredible peaceful scenery, but as soon as I began to be aware *that* i was watching I lost it again.

Another example: the seagulls here, I hear them talking in my dreams. Sometimes I wake up and they are still talking, in dutch. But that soon disappears, like some sort of after effect. One time I ‘sensed’ that they are actually watching into my dreams and commenting on them. I was dreaming about something and the seagull on the roof was giving comments about my dream, I heard his voice loud and clear. Seagulls are weird creatures. I dunno if I like them a whole lot. They seem to have no sense of privacy, that’s for sure.

Last example: it happened to me a few times this year that in the morning I hear a soft voice that says something like ‘This is the time’ and then exactly after that voice spoke my alarm goes off. Quite absurd. I hear that voice quite clearly. There’s something weird about the whole thing, because it’s so exact. I could accept an ‘inner clock voice’ theory but this really has atomic precision. It’s like some sort of doppler effect of reality.

Toen ik deze korte roman uit had – ik heb elk woord wel twee keer gelezen -, zat ik verdwaasd op de bank en herlas de laatste zin met daarin de prachtige vergelijking over de witte ganzen die soms al vroeg in het seizoen vertrekken. Ze laten ons het ergste vrezen voor de lange winter die ons wacht. Zo gaat dat ook met gedachten aan geliefden die we koesteren, de hoop dat het mogelijk moet zijn ooit gelukkig in je eigen kleine beschermde wereld te mogen en kunnen leven.

Een bizarre melancholie grijpt je naar de keel, wanneer je gewend bent geraakt aan die absurde mengeling van het gedachtengoed van Spinoza, Saint-Simon en middeleeuwse ridderromans. Een gedachtengoed dat een jonge vrouw (of is het een man?) bijeensprokkelt om haar (zijn)leven houvast te bieden, nadat haar (zijn) vader zich op een ochtend, banaal als alle andere, heeft opgehangen. Meer verklappen over het plot van dit fascinerend werk van Gaétan Soucy `La petite fille qui aimait trop les allumettes’ dat kunnen Hollandse recensenten veel beter. Dat zijn dé nawouwelaars bij uitstek.

De achterlijkheid van religies gaat in dit verhaal van nog geen honderdvijftig pagina’s hand in hand met een diepe behoefte aan zingeving, aan liefde en oriëntatie in het leven. Rondom ons treffen we slechts een woestenij aan. Een woestenij, jà, maar wel een waar we van houden, omdat we geen andere kennen. Onze naasten springen er echter op een ongehoord barbaarse manier mee om. Ze offeren onschuldige lammeren voor hun eigen platte behoeften en wij zijn veroordeeld daarbij dadeloos toe te zien. Dadeloos? Diep van binnen janken we ons wezenloos, maar we nemen het tambourijn ter hand en dansen mee rond de brandstapel. Overal waar de dood zich breed maakt, daar wordt een god geboren, even bruut, medogenloos en overschillig als zijn voorgangers.

Soucy is een van de weinige schrijvers uit Québec die het gered heeft zonder ten onder te gaan aan het predikaat streekschrijver. `La petite fille qui aimait trop les allumettes’ is een prachtig, adembenemend boek, een speurtocht naar de ziel en door de taal. Soms dacht ik dat het Québequois, het Joual – letterlijk: paardefrans – niet goed begreep. Een paar pagina’s verderop bleek echter dat dat wat ik niet begreep uitgelegd werd. Een krakkemikkige uitleg, zoals te verwachten viel van mensen die woorden niet rationeel hanteren, maar intuïtief, als een onvolmaakt instrument om te duiden waar het in dit leven om draait. Voortdurend klinkt in de zinnen de grote achting door voor dit instrument. Dat maakt het verhaal in meerdere passages tot een vreemdsoortige liturgische tekst. En dat staat dan weer in schril contrast met de horrorwereld waarin je stapje voor stapje, met vallen en opstaan, wordt binnengeleid.

Er waren momenten dat ik dacht dit moeten jongeren lezen die zich identificeren met de gothic-stromingen, de black metal van Ulver of Sigur Ross. Het verhaal heeft zelfs lichte Buffy the vampire slayer-elementen. Maar er is niets `kemp’ aan dit boek. Het is van begin tot het einde doortrokken van een diepe, treurige ernst die als reuma in je botten kruipt. Tranen van levenspijn zijn me in de ogen gesprongen.

Houlala, c’est heavy par bout, zoals Gabriele, een Canadese lezer verzuchtte.

Jo Willems, Cultuurpaleis, 2008