Outgoing Vessel <em>(an excerpt)</em>

Abstract

OLSEN PHOTO: ROLANDO DIAZ JENSEN PHOTO: CHUCK KUAN TANGLED ROOTS PHOTO: MATT ARTZ Outgoing Vessel (an excerpt) by Ursula Andkjær Olsen poetry * so many dead their eyeballs are filling this vessel grave vessel grave vessel the earth is a slow fire re: counting the dead: I have a strategy in place I HAVE A STRATEGY IN PLACE Ursula Andkjær Olsen (b. 1970, Copenhagen) made her literary debut in 2000 and has since published nine collections of poetry. Olsen has received numerous grants and awards for her work, including the prestigious Montanaprisen for Det 3. årtusindes hjerte (Third-Millennium Heart) and the Danish Critics’ Prize for its sequel, Udgående Fartøj (Outgoing Vessel). Katrine Øgaard Jensen is a writer and translator whose work has been published in the Columbia Journal, Washington Square Review, Arc Poetry Magazine, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. Her translation of Ursula Andkjær Olsen’s poetry collection Third-Millennium Heart was recently shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award and longlisted for the National Translation Award. She lives in New York City where she edits EuropeNow. * longing moves in all directions like a spherical light scattered around me I brush my hair in its circle to be more concise: human longing scatters like a BIG BANG around this around the human out in the wet grass hair it’s this BIG BANG that must be returned in its original condition, an infinitely solid sphere; must be moulded into a hard, smooth material and placed in the hole below the heart where it must remain above Tangled roots in Joshua Tree National Park. Photo: Matt Artz/Unsplash 24 WLT SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2018 * I have tied the knot with a ROCK-HARD MATERIAL it’s taken 1,000 years inside me I have wrung myself to create the necessary loop wrungness caused by external violence wrungness caused by the exercise of violence wrungness caused by flight wrungness caused by care It’s all there, in the loop created when I lay my head in my lap and close the gate * to have marble skin not as an invitation but as a bulwark the strongest there is the most comfortable the sacrosanctest untouchablest * I’m thinking of training my body until it becomes a rock that is my objective the most precise expression of it it’s better to cut a new one, to cut anew, and hew from it a perfect orb any shape I want hew from it a rectangle, cube, almond, moon AND THEN move in once it’s done Translations from the Danish By Katrine Øgaard Jensen Chris Arthur Hummingbirds Between the Pages Ohio State University Press C hris Arthur’s most recent collection of essays, Hummingbirds Between the Pages, makes a compelling argument on behalf of the universal values of the human animal. Throughout, Arthur displays his gift for taking the humblest of objects in hand or most ephemeral of thought-strands in mind and mining invaluable meaning from a shaft as deep as the imagination. His authorial voice grounds the work in a gentle but unflinching tenor, offering lessons both heartbreaking and life-affirming with the same patient methodology. With time as his muse, Arthur traverses ground riddled with corpses and blooms and celebrates the lessons both provide with the same intellectual fervor. Modern life can be something of a psychological peril. Depending on where one is born on this planet of ours, the best-case scenario is merely being swept up in the ever-quickening torrent of technological change, the rise of authoritarian pseudo-democracies , and, of course, multiple convergent crises in the forms of peak oil, peak soil, water poverty, and climate change. For even the most geographically privileged, comfort is in short supply and, when found, should be savored as the genuine treasure it represents. I found comfort in Arthur’s lyrical use of the English language in its fullness to explore the biggest ideas we know. To borrow from Paul Gauguin: “D’où venons-nous / Que sommes-nous / Où allons-nous” (Where do we come from / What are we / Where are we going)? For those who have wished that Fred Rogers could have remained our counselor, but as...