{"id":282146,"date":"2011-02-09T15:45:00","date_gmt":"2011-02-09T15:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2011\/02\/09\/engulf-enkindle\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T16:28:18","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T16:28:18","slug":"engulf-enkindle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2011\/02\/09\/engulf-enkindle\/","title":{"rendered":"engulf \u2014 enkindle"},"content":{"rendered":"

engulf \u2014 enkindle<\/em> is a stunning book of poetry. It literally stunned me into absolute submission; it is the book of poetry I\u2019d been wanting to read for years. It\u2019s a small volume, and I read it in one sitting, faster than I normally read poetry, because I couldn\u2019t slow down. The language sunk its hooks into me and pulled me through the book, like rafting down rapids. If some of this sounds violent, that\u2019s no mistake \u2013 the book is full of sensual violence, done to the body of language and the body in the poem. <\/p>\n

\n

want now: you \u2013 drive into me
\nwant to push to the edge, hang, you
\nhaul all my: shale, scrape
\nit off from: the head, from the shoulders
\nto rootstock throat gravel: you split me
\ngive me \u2013 as if severed \u2013 sharp
\ncountours \u2013 fangs wolffian ridge
\nquestions too \u2013 will i? \u2013
\ni \u2013 take you to me
\n                                 balances I<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The stacatto lines, broken by strange punctuation, expose themselves as duplicitious; the punctuation is superfluous, and yet it\u2019s not. It\u2019s a violation of the line, of the rules of grammar, but it forces a rhythm on the almost unwilling reader. It\u2019s pleasurable and distressing simultaneously, mimetic of the poems. The I in the poem submits to the violence of the you, while exerting her own controlled violence over the reader, and the poem and ultimately her poetic body. <\/p>\n

Like most “experimental” texts this work demands more of its reader, a different set of tools and strategies. It is a text that has been splayed wide open, disgorging multiple readings. This extract from the second poem could be read as describing what the poetry itself is doing:<\/p>\n

\n

     II<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

\u2013 percieve:     just at the opencuts: set free
\nfurrow \u2013          to stand, sense, to drift now am: pitching to you
\n                        through the: fissures [. . .]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

[The bracketed ellipsis is mine.] Pay attention to the slippery shifts of meaning across and through the punctuation, the way caesura is inserted into the lines and creates tension with the phrases that follow the colons. Feel the tension that is created by the speeding up and slowing down of the lines, the gaps in meaning and thwarted grammatical expectations (the missing subject for \u201cam\u201d for example). <\/p>\n

This is poetry that demands several readings, at least one of which must be aloud. When I teach poetry, I always ask that the students read the poems out loud, as well as to themselves, and if I suspect they have not done it we do it together. Great poetry creates sonic space on the page, and visual space in the voice, and the movement between these opens up new meanings. Traditionally, this happens behind the semantic content of the poem, but Beals\u2019s rendering of Utler\u2019s poetry prioritizes its lyric qualities. In engulf \u2013 enkindle<\/em>, the poems hinge on sound and silence, on rhythm and breaking, with meaning following. Try listening to this without reading along, and see what kind of difference it makes.1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

\n

XI<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

finally, startled from sleep, find:
\nthe larynx deseeded is
\nhollowed: hands palpate,
\nit: fumbling, feathered, from
\nribcage entwine themselves
\ndeeper into the: reed swallow: light,
\ngurgling, darkly well, dimly
\nthey: keel towards hulls towards hollows
\nweave: cavities, gorges of
\nstalks of fingers of (..)
\nso to speak: towards the bittern \u2013 neting place,
\nin the singing reed so it\u2019s called \u2013 grow
\nentangled as \u2013 flotsam and jetsam \u2013 stitched
\nup to the: glottis rustling
\nalmost trembling i hear you again: say
\nsong you say song \u2013 what is: song<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Kurt Beals is a genius. I can\u2019t imagine how these translations could have come to be otherwise. He may have been working at an advantage; Germanic languages share many rhythm and sound paterns, two of the most impressive features of this translation. Still, the strangeness of these poems, which demand so much of the reader, must have demaned even more of Beals. To create this kind of complexity in translation is nothing short of stunning, an acheivment compounded by the shifting registers and pacing of the language. <\/p>\n

This is an uncompromising work of brilliance on both Utler and Beals\u2019 parts. It\u2019s sharp and sexy, challenging and riviting and absolutely relentless. This is the poetry I\u2019ve been waiting my whole life for.<\/p>\n

1<\/sup> Here’s a recording Erica made of “Utler IX”:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

engulf \u2014 enkindle is a stunning book of poetry. It literally stunned me into absolute submission; it is the book of poetry I\u2019d been wanting to read for years. It\u2019s a small volume, and I read it in one sitting, faster than I normally read poetry, because I couldn\u2019t slow down. The language sunk its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[38126,38156,38116,28396,5706,38136,38146],"class_list":["post-282146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-anja-utler","tag-burning-deck","tag-engulf-enkindle","tag-erica-mena","tag-german-literature","tag-german-poetry","tag-kurt-beals"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282146"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":346066,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282146\/revisions\/346066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}