31 August 2008

remember my valentine's day poem?

i know that some of you have been wondering about what's going on with the four-digit numbers... check this out:

(picture taken from postsecret.)

like i cared about valentine's day

i think i might just have missed you
thinking of me it is sixteen past three and
you know what they say about four-digit numbers
with all digits identical or repetitive or whatever
it's this hiccup that jumps up my throat
when you're about to smile it's me laughing at nothing
sometimes or just at a song i know you would like
it's how you look at me just right you see i think
there's never been a reason good enough so far you know
there's never been a reason good enough so close.

29 August 2008

poetiken 2008

currently lauter niemand continue their Poetiken series (originally launched in 2002) on their homepage. besides julia trompeter, angela sanmann and kai pohl, i am featured, which is very nice. in addition to the Poetik, they also put up a text sample of each author. mine is Vom Klingeln, a rhyming prose text i wrote in berlin in the early summer of 2007. this is the same text they had chosen for their Lauter Niemand publication of november 2007.

my initial idea was to create a Poetik that was a collage of comments that close friends of mine made on my work. yet although i got great (and very flattering) responses, it turned out to be virtually impossible to amalgamte them into one single new prose text. each statement was far too original and powerful in its own right. so i held on to them until now. and even though - frankly - i would have liked to censor some of them, i decided to put them on this blog unedited*:

Das ist schon gar nicht mehr Literatur. Das ist schon eigentlich... wieder gut.
Sie ist unbedarft, das muss ich sagen. Ja, unbedarft. Und dann auch wieder... als hätte sie's gewusst. So rotzig es manchmal scheint, man merkt doch gleich: es ist liebevoll.
Es ist zu Gedicht, um Slam zu sein.


Gott sei dank hast Du aufgeschrieben was wir getan haben! Ich ahnte wohl, dass es intensiv war, aber durch die Ordnung Deiner Worte wurden mir die erst die gesamte Intensivität fassbar!

Anders als für Sirin, für den das Auto immer nur ein Mittel gewesen sein soll um stehen zu bleiben, -( «400 Kilometer durch eine bedrückende Landschaft auf der Suche nach ferniensis; 200 Kilometer für drei nielithea» soll seine Frau von einem Ausflug nach Kansas vermerkt haben), - spricht es für das postfeministische Selbstvertrauen der Autorin mit welcher Selbverständlichkeit von - teilweise tätowierten - Männern gesteuerte Personenkraftwagen zu rollenden Chill-Out-Zone werden und lässt eher Kombis mit Holzchassis assozieren, denn ein so gewöhnungsbedürftiges bis bockiges oder gar rassiges Gefährt wie den neuen Toyota M5 oder die langläufige Non-Chalance eines Ford Pick Up Trucks namens Taccoma.


Too many shortcuts! / Zu viele Abkürzungen !

ich lese deine texte gern, weil sie sprachlich wirklich eigenständig sind. ich liebe deine ungewöhnlichen bilder, die du für menschen und situationen schaffst, mit denen du sie beschreibst, und bin immer wieder überrascht und erstaunt, aus welchem blickwinkel du die dinge siehst. dein feines gespür für beziehungsfäden und stimmungsnuancen zeigt sich sowohl in der wortwahl als auch in der entscheidung für das tempo, das den einzelnen text charakterisiert. manche verdichtungen in deinen gedichten kann ich zwar nicht ganz entschlüsseln, aber es schwingt immer ein besonderes bild, eine aussergewöhnliche wortverbindung, eine von dir geschaffene stimmung nach.

Aufschlussreich autobiographisch.

"Es ist weich um mich, es wird immer weich um mich sein". Diese beiden Schlüsselsätze drücken die dem Leben und Werk innewohnende positive Kraft der jungen Autorin trefflich aus.

In den Rhythmus eintauchen. Vor lauter Rhythmus den Inhalt vergessen und manchmal ist es gut. Der Rhythmus oder der Inhalt?
Zuhören. Dabeisein. Weiterlesen.
Hoffen, dass das Schreiben einfach so - und nicht anders - passieren wird.



*this, of course, has been agreed upon by all the authors.

ann cotten links






a while back, ken sent me this link to a site that is dedicated to ann cotten, who now even has her own wikipedia entry.

24 August 2008

the new yorker has a great article on one of
my favorite writers of all time, knut hamsun.

his novel hunger is among the best books i have ever read in my life.

i am currently reading victoria, which he wrote in 1898.

next on the list is growth of the soil of 1917, for which he received the nobel prize in literature in 1920.

18 August 2008

bizarre

i've known selma meerbaum-eisinger's poems for a long while now. not sure at all what to think of this project. i guess it's okay in that it links up poetry with pop culture. there's a lot of kitsch in selma's less well-known poems, though, so i suppose she would have approved of this project. to me, however, the choice of some of the singers seems a little bit off. any opinions?

15 August 2008

(picture taken from postsecret.)

10 August 2008

translation request

someone asked me to translate rainer maria rilke's Liebeslied, so here goes:

lovesong

how to hold my soul so that
it won't touch yours? how to
carry it well over you on to what remains?
so much do i long to embed it
in things lost in dark
at a strange silent spot that
won't rock when your downs roll.
it is all that has moved you and i, us,
that sums you and i like a stroke
hums one sound from two strings.
which instrument is it we're strung to?
at what bandsman's hands?
o sweet song.


it sounds a little more modern than the german original i suppose, but rilke was 32 when he wrote it, so i guess that would still count as young and hip. for dustier translations, see here, or here.

09 August 2008

older

schael mich aus meinem
geheimnis nun da wir
die sommer vergleichen
und aufgeben. aufgeben.
spatzen auf dieser schiene
des grauen gelaenders. nun.
nun und aneurysmen.
zehn jahre noch, freund.
zehn jahre noch an deinen
lippen.

08 August 2008

lazy

okay, so i started translating that poem of 26 july 2008. somehow i can't make it work in english, but here are parts of it in case you're interested in what it's about:

tilts the horizon in front of the scuttle up
down and down up tilts unreasonableness.

[...]

all those first times are in flower still flowering
that valley's bed up and down by that stream and yet
time passed into nothing into just not passing at all

that sheer equatorial problem... [...]

[...]

up down up and down the unreasonableness.

03 August 2008

a quick update

lately i haven't been up to much writing apart from the writing i do for my thesis. that's a shame, but unchangeable. the good news are that i am almost done and that i am almost done. with only 2000 words and one edit to go, i should be back at my pre-london authory self come mid-august. no more studying, no more exams, no more papers. sigh.