Blert, insomnia and Ida on Litlive
Not being able to fall asleep, I thought I’d jot a few words down.
First of all, some time ago I came into possession of a book called Blert by canadian poet Jordan Scott. Probably through Angela Rawlings, Derek Beaulieu or Christian Bök – I’m not sure anymore, they’ve all gotten me books. Whoever it was, I’m greatly thankful.
Anyways. As seems to be becoming a dangerous habit I looked through it, decided it needed a closer read and almost forgot about it. A few days ago, going through my pile of unreads or need closer-reads on my way to the bathroom (disgusting habit, I know) I picked it up again and have been leafing through it back and forth in the last days. There’s a lot of words in it I don’t ‘understand’ (I’m being ironic or sarcastic, either one, it’s the same word in Icelandic, that’s what quotation marks are for). There’s a lot of words I should look up in a dictionary. Twayblade. Fibula. And most of the other ones. I feel I should look them up because we have an obligation for a traditional understanding of books. Or I do, at least, I feel the need. But I also get the feeling that I’m all wrong in presuming I need to understand all the words.
Let me explain. This (by the way, amazing, did I mention that already?) book is a highly materialistic study of stuttering. It doesn’t portray stuttering as much as it causes it, or maybe enacts it. On the cover, poet-critic Craig Dworkin blurbs:
Undertaking a ‘poetics of stutter’, the book is not primarily a mimetic representation of stuttering, or the reproduction of stammered speech, but rather an investigation into how the stutter originates. Enacted rather than named, the stutter here is thus no longer an affect registered in language, but rather an effect of language.
And reading the book is certainly a stuttering experience. I literally feel like I’m stuttering, but it’s as if I can’t really grasp which organ I’m stuttering with. I don’t think it’s the eyes. Perhaps it’s one of those lobes mentioned in TV medical dramas. Precortal frontex lobe. Frontcordial pretext lobe.
Here’s a page-worth of beauty from the book:
In lacuna, hallelujah. In lagoon, Ojbwa tuba.
Artery ooze wasabi hue, echo hooey: Pashtoon Pashtoon.
Ode awe hush-hush oboe hiccup, ave Velveeta on first-whirl beluga.
Minnow fandango ossify estuary, woo uh-oh in Wang Chung haze.
This hoopla, now hacienda.
This vivisection, now vendetta.
Muffle newfangled vow:
.
.
.
betrothe epigraph halcyon in cyclone.
Another weirdness was, after listening to Angela’s reading in Edmonton, where every other poet had poems with Icelandic words, to notice that one section in Blert is called Jökulhlaup (run-off from a sub-glacial eruption). And shortly after finding out that Sina Queyras is partly Icelandic. Canada is in fact the only country in the world to have an Icelandic expat community, that I know of, because of alot of moving in the 19th century. One of our greatest poets was among the emigrants – Stephan G. Stephansson. But as far as I know, Angela and Jordan Scott have no Icelandic family, nor did the open-mic poet who read about Mývatn in Edmonton, I think (I of course don’t know, I don’t even know his name).
So go buy Blert now if you haven’t already.
If you read Swedish go check out my remixview of Ida Börjels Konsumentköplagen on Litlive.
Minnesota has a big expat community as well–you can fly direct from Minneapolis!
Did I tell you of my terrible attempts to translate Icelandic poems from a distant cousin? Very sad. I should post so you can have a laugh.
Minnesota – yes, of course. But that’s like right next door. I’ve always felt they were rather Canadian. Never met one though.
Bill Holm – who died just very recently – was from Minnesota. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Holm_(poet) And Iceland.
And yes – Icelandic translations! And I’m also totally a fan of people doing what they’re terrible at. Post post haste!