P/P | r2c | May: Poetry on the Edge of Pop Culture

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"...They sit high up, on thin tires, in the margin of the traffic. Their strip not yet annexed, they are on their way in a slower century, perhaps with time // passing hands over the fever of the world..." from In the Margin, a poem by Willem Jan Otten This week, an image called Surge Can Duo. Also: seven new translations of Lowland poems. rss: Twitter r2c_dutchpoetry

Where we place poetry on our metaphysical map of the world is, I think, one
of those questions which is of central cultural importance. Of course, explicitly,
such a map does not exist, but none the less, it is there, tacitly, implied by what
we think, say and do.

After an absence from North America of more than seven years, when I came here
again recently I was struck by a number of things to which most locals would give
no mind. But for me they were very telling. For example, it seemed obvious to me that
the environmental movement had failed terribly in not only reducing the number and
types of big polluting cars, but that things had in my eyes actually gotten worse. I couldn't
get over the new popularity of big jeeplike luxury vehicles that have 'get -out -of -
my-way-or-I'll -run-over-you' written all over them. Second, I was struck by the
lawns—those monocultural, ecologically unsound, sacred cows of a Disneyland-like
suburbia, were not only as ubiquitous as ever, but now husbanded by veritable
small-scale armies of pesticide companies with euphemistic names like "Black
Diamond" and "Lawn Art". And lastly, to round off my little short list of shocking
nouveau americana, there was and is, of course, the ever-present pop can. I grew-up
in the North American sixties when aluminum cans were just being introduced
and were as high-tech and modern as moon travel. Already some twenty years ago, when
I was working as a gardener in Berkeley, California, I had a sudden epiphany while
tending one of my over-watered non-native gardens. It was this: that the environmental
movement will have demonstrated that a fundamental change in our awareness of
the natural world is possible only when and if the pop can is not just recycled, but
rather totally eliminated. Well, this hasn't come to pass. But for me it remains nonetheless
a powerful symbol of the fact that, despite all the important changes which have taken
place in dealing with pollution, basically anti-ecological and outmoded ways of thinking
have by and large survived unscathed.

So, at least we can be sure that, on the physical map of the world, big cars, carpet-
like lawns and loud-colored cans still loom larger than life. My conjecture is
that this does not bode well for poetry's meta-physical position on the same map. At the
same time, I tell myself that it is possible not to be influenced by all the surrounding
chaos and simply say that poetry—even if it does not at present–should and does
occupy a central place in our collective cultural being. This is so because poetry, it seems
to me, is where the energy of essence is both divined and given manifest form. Perhaps one
could say that if we don't give poetry its proper role, then something cheap and destructive,
something like lawns or pop cans, will indeed move in like noxious alien weeds in a
pristine landscape and take its place.

The seven new translations of Dutch poems I've brought together here relate to
this theme in different ways. Willem Jan Otten's In the Margin gives us the nice
image of poetry-as-bike-trip in the land of cars. Indeed, that does ring very true.
Anton Ent's two little pieces have taken this bike out into the beautifully lush and
green Dutch countryside and now help us see the world around us with new eyes and
ears. J. Slauerhoff's famous poem, Homeless One, takes a more contrarian
approach , setting up camp right inside the poem itself. And Remco Campert, as always,
offers here refreshingly straightforward and simple musings about the poet as happy
outsider who wanders about like a lost Socrates pondering the strangeness as well as
the significance of what he sees. And lastly, as a coda and as way of marking the
special time of May in Dutch culture, the time when the horrors and suffering
of World War II are remembered, we have Nijhoff's ode to an unknown soldier.
Here the poet is alone again, crying out to the world that this place, where he stands,
where an anonymous soldier lies buried, seems to be the only place left still true to the
spirit of the Netherlands. Thanks to all those who heroically came to liberate the Lowlands
and the whole of Europe more than half a century ago, this did not come to pass:

| view / print Picture/Poem Poster: Monday (Ellen Warmond) (86 K) | or download as PDF |

See also: new

"Straight roads, Slow rivers, Deep clay."

A collection of contemporary Dutch poetry in English translation, with commentary and photographs by Cliff Crego

See also another website by Cliff Crego: The Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

A presentation of 80 of the best poems of Rilke in both German and new English translations: biography, links, posters