{"id":283026,"date":"2011-04-04T19:15:20","date_gmt":"2011-04-04T19:15:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2011\/04\/04\/the-book-of-things-why-this-book-should-win-the-btba\/"},"modified":"2018-05-04T15:13:33","modified_gmt":"2018-05-04T15:13:33","slug":"the-book-of-things-why-this-book-should-win-the-btba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2011\/04\/04\/the-book-of-things-why-this-book-should-win-the-btba\/","title":{"rendered":"The Book of Things [Why This Book Should Win the BTBA]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Starting this week, we\u2019ll be highlighting the five finalists in the poetry category for the BTBA<\/span>. Similar to what we did for the fiction longlist,<\/a> these will be framed by the question: \u201cWhy should this book win?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> for all past and future posts in this series.<\/em><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s post is by poetry committee member Kevin Prufer.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Book of Things<\/em><\/b> by Ale\u0161 \u0160teger, translated by Brian Henry<\/p>\n

Language:<\/b> Slovenian
\nCountry:<\/b> Slovenia
\nPublisher:<\/b> BOA<\/span> Editions
\nPages:<\/b> 92<\/p>\n

Why This Book Should Win:<\/b> The poems in Ale\u0161 \u0160teger\u2019s The Book of Things<\/em> focus with nearly comic intensity on an array of everyday objects\u2014an egg, a coat, a toothpick, a stomach. Here, a potato recollects the soil it came from. Or a hand dryer speaks a windy language we can\u2019t quite understand. Or a doormat forgives us all. But \u0160teger\u2019s poems go far beyond mere comic description, personification, or metaphor. Rather, his objects reflect our own strange complexities\u2014our eagerness to consume, our rationalizations and kindness. Our many cruelties and our grandiosities.<\/p>\n

Each of these fifty poems (the book includes seven sections of seven poems plus one introductory \u201cproem\u201d titled \u201cA\u201d) fixates with obsessive detail on a different, focusing on the turnings of its imagined mind. A loaf of bread \u201casks you to do him harm, for you to stab him \/ To shred him to pieces, consume his still warm body.\u201d \u201cYes, yes,\u201d \u0160teger concludes, \u201che loves you, that is why he accepts your knife. \/ He knows that all his wounds crumble in your hand.\u201d Or, of a pair of windshield wipers, he writes: \u201cBoth of them hide something, \/ That is why they move in such harmony. \/ Like two serfs in black rubber boots.\u201d<\/p>\n

At times playful or grimly serious, the effect of these poems slowly gathers until one has the sense not of looking at everyday objects anew, but of being looked at anew by the once inconsequential objects that surround us. And, reflected in their many, multifaceted eyes, we do no fair well.<\/p>\n

\u0160teger\u2019s The Book of Things<\/em> is harrowing and hilarious, unnerving and weirdly familiar\u2014and, most of all, ambitious in its attempt to look anew into our all-too-human darkness. And translator, Brian Henry (himself a poet of significant talent) renders these poems beautifully into an English that is both colloquial and disconcertingly plainspoken.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Starting this week, we\u2019ll be highlighting the five finalists in the poetry category for the BTBA. Similar to what we did for the fiction longlist, these will be framed by the question: \u201cWhy should this book win?\u201d Click here for all past and future posts in this series. Today\u2019s post is by poetry committee member […]<\/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":[67476],"tags":[37596,39326,39336,37856,39026,16076,37616,39346,37876],"class_list":["post-283026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-translated-book-awards","tag-ales-steger","tag-book-of-things","tag-brian-henry-boa-editions","tag-btba-2011","tag-btba-2011-poetry-finalists","tag-kevin-prufer","tag-slovenian-literature","tag-slovenian-poetry","tag-why-this-book-should-win"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283026","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=283026"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":397312,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283026\/revisions\/397312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}