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:
| r2c, Slow R-ivers. Straight R-oads. Deep C-lay. Is my website
for new Dutch poetry in english translation. The above piece
is an into for a set of four poems, at:
http://www.cs-music.com/features/surge-2.html