{"id":284546,"date":"2011-04-28T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-04-28T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2011\/04\/28\/the-book-of-things-2\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T16:23:56","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T16:23:56","slug":"the-book-of-things-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2011\/04\/28\/the-book-of-things-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Book of Things"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Book of Things<\/em>, published in Slovenian in 2005, is Ale\u0161 \u0160teger\u2019s fourth book of poetry in ten years, beginning with his Chessboards of Hours<\/em>, published in 1995 when he was 22. Despite his many international awards, including the 2007 Ro\u017ean\u010deva Award for best book of essays written in Slovenian, TBOT<\/span><\/em> is his first collection to be translated into English. Translator Brian Henry, best known for his translation of Toma\u017e \u0160alamun\u2019s Woods and Chalices<\/em>, praises \u201cthe philosophical and lyrical sophistication of [\u0160teger\u2019s] poems,\u201d and has achieved that same sophistication in translation. The book is structured in seven chapters of seven poems each, following the strange preface \u201cA,\u201d which Henry calls a \u201cproem\u201d though it is written in verse. The other forty-nine poems are titled after things with no obvious connection to each other, from the first poem \u201cEgg\u201d to the last poem \u201cCandle,\u201d with stops as varied as \u201cStrobe Light\u201d and \u201cCocker Spaniel.\u201d The first set of seven is completed with \u201cKnots,\u201d \u201cStone,\u201d \u201cGrater,\u201d \u201cCat,\u201d \u201cSausage,\u201d and \u201cUrinal,\u201d the last of which completes its well-developed imagery of the urinal as the mouth of a fish embedded in a restroom wall with a haunting testicular threat:<\/p>\n

\n

What kind of human voice is on the other side of the urinal?
\nAre people happier, more timeless there, fish Fa?
\nOr there is no other side,<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Only the visions of drunks, tensed in fear
\nThat you don\u2019t close your thirsty mouth, Faronika,
\nAs fair punishment for grinding your yellowed teeth.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

And castrate us.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That complex layering, which combines metaphor and mythology\u2014Faronika is a mythical fish from Slovenian folk songs\u2014with the physical and contemporary\u2014Fa is a popular brand of bathroom soap\u2014is characteristic of Steger\u2019s poems. In his preface Henry notes that \u0160teger\u2019s use of couplets, tercets, and quatrains represents a notable departure from his freer first three collections. Their faux formality is a perfect medium for that layering. <\/p>\n

Henry has done well to replicate the tone and sound play of the Slovenian originals, as in \u201cMint,\u201d here in its entirety:<\/p>\n

\n

Mintafiction, minthane, mintabolism.
\nThere the smell of mint grows out of bone,
\nOut of s neighbor\u2019s thumb and a stranger\u2019s shin.
\nNo animal could do it, it\u2019s not worth repeating. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Mintatax, mintasound, mintaphysics.
\nFor what stays, when only plants try
\nTo heal a musician\u2019s rib and the mayor\u2019s skull.
\nNo laxative could do it, it\u2019s not worth mentioning.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Even less who will remember, cannot forget.
\nEndless fields of mint, ruts, indifference.
\nMintamen. Mintanight. Mintanaught.
\nNo dictionary could do it, it\u2019s not worth noting. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u0160teger\u2019s frequent mention of bones and stones remind me of Vasko Popa\u2019s The Star Wizard\u2019s Legacy<\/em>, in the late Morton Marcus\u2019 last translation, but \u0160teger\u2019s Things<\/em> achieve a greater density with their descriptive imagery. The wordplay \u0160teger employs to build novel mint-abstractions exemplifies his dry, observant humor. Elsewhere in the book he employs darker imagery to similar effect, as in \u201cCoat,\u201d which begins:<\/p>\n

\n

Do you remember the archivist who committed suicide
\nBecause of one misplaced sheet?
\nThe three librarians who never returned from the warehouse?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

The history students who bit the professor\u2019s neck in an exam
\nBecause he could not remember the price of potato soup in May 1889?
\nThe parrot who endlessly shouted Stalingrad, sexual revolution, self-
\nreliance?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cCoat\u201d exemplifies \u0160teger\u2019s greatest achievement with The Book of Things<\/em>, the subtle development of the lexicographer\u2019s pathos, the impossibility of objectivity. It\u2019s one of the best collections of poetry in translation in recent memory, a Balkanized encyclopedia of things carefully examined. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Book of Things, published in Slovenian in 2005, is Ale\u0161 \u0160teger\u2019s fourth book of poetry in ten years, beginning with his Chessboards of Hours, published in 1995 when he was 22. Despite his many international awards, including the 2007 Ro\u017ean\u010deva Award for best book of essays written in Slovenian, TBOT is his first collection […]<\/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":[37596,15416,37606,39996,37626,37616],"class_list":["post-284546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-ales-steger","tag-boa-editions","tag-brian-henry","tag-david-shook","tag-poetry-reviews","tag-slovenian-literature"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284546","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=284546"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":345026,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284546\/revisions\/345026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}