WORTLAUT 2008: DAS FEST!

friends, if you want to meet me before i move to berlin, you should attend the

WORTLAUT 2008 FEST

in vienna on 2 october.

no, i am not depressed. it is just a great poem.

where these edges end

alexander gumz was kind enough to provide me with a more recent picture of his. thus, the post on him and his poem has been updated - see for yourself.

interview with myself, part 1

apparently, people have many questions about the below mentioned concept of Poetiken. clemens kuhnert compiled them, and gave them to a couple of authors to answer in 2003. i felt like answering some of them, too.

To you, when is a poem finished?

A poem is finished when it sounds round. I like smooth rhythms. A poem is finished when every word is equally important. Some of the poems I put on this blog are not finished.

Before you start writing, do you know where a poem will be going?

Not really, no. Mostly I do know how it will end, though, as the last line is usually the first one I come up with. If you want, I write poems backwards. The question for me is, therefore: Where does a poem start? What is it that lies at the heart of the matter?

Do you care how other poets treat a certain subject matter? Do you tend to follow trends?

I really don't care about what other poets write. Especially not when it comes to poetry. That might be a little different with respect to prose, which I find more important than poetry, because it tends to be more accessible. Personally, I find prose more difficult to write. It's a pain. My poetry is more spontaneous than my prose. Prose is a huge deal. That's probably the reason why I write so little.

I try to avoid trends like the plague, but I do notice a reoccurence of certain topics amongst the generation of writers I belong to. I think that is a) because people are much more alike than they like to believe and b) because zeitgeist and social surroundings take their toll on all of us.

the paris review has a good story up:

speak no evil by uzodinma iweala,

a young american writer who has received a whole lot of positive attention from reknowned critics. the story is a wee bit predictable, but very well written. his first novel 'Beasts of No Nation' was translated into German and published earlier this year. (picture source)

on the lack of female german intellectuals

DIE ZEIT is trying to find an explanation. i would like to point out again here that joan didion's the year of magical thinking is absolutely worth reading as well.

sunday lecture

if you're interested in pandora, her box, psychoanalysis and family secrets, and have an hour and a half of spare time, you should watch this video, created by the philoctetes center for the study of imagination. amongst other outstanding women, kathryn harrison (or here) is in it. she wrote the kiss, a controversial book which is incredibly well written and still one of my favorite books of all time. after i had read it in 2005, it took me two years until i was able to email her and let her know. she replied very kindly, which still means a lot to me. thank you, kathryn. picture source

alexander gumz - where these edges end

alexander gumz (picutre source: private) wrote a good poem called WO DIESE RÄNDER ENDEN. and guess what? i translated it. the german original is to be found below, as per usual.


WHERE THESE EDGES END

at the edges of loving you say
stands something annoying that won’t let you
leave here nor stay yet it is
(i can tell from your hands)
more than clear that you’re happy with things

the white signs visible so well
from above move
from under your soles when you
lift the key to the mouth
turn yourself around and say

you’d like to dance with all those who still
stand in the sun (in vast parking lots)
once a week finished off so that
customers leave as fast friends
so that you comprehend

where these edges end


WO DIESE RÄNDER ENDEN

an den rändern des verliebtseins sagst du
steht irgendwas und nervt lässt dich
nicht gehen und nicht bleiben obwohl
(das sehe ich an deinen händen)
mehr als klar ist du willst nichts daran ändern

die weissen anfahrtszeichen aus der luft
so gut zu sehen verziehen sich
unter deinen sohlen wenn du
den schlüssel an den mund hebst
dich um dich drehst und sagst

du willst mit allen tanzen die jetzt noch
in der sonne stehen (auf grossen parkplätzen)
einmal pro woche abgespritzt damit
die kunden auch als freunde gehen
damit dir endlich klar wird

wo diese ränder enden

who needs a german book prize anyways?

Peter Handke can obviously do without - he asked that his book Die Morawische Nacht be taken off the list of nominees for the prestiguous German Book Prize: "So that the younger authors stand a chance." While that is very generous of him in that the 25.000 € prize money is definitely not going into his pocket, I feel it should be on the jury to decide who most deserves it. By backing out, Handke avoids comparison not only to the younger authors, but to Martin Walser, too. The line between generosity, pretentiousness and headiness seems very thin at times.

(picture taken from pictures of walls.)

werbung ist ja eigentlich nicht meine art

aber das hier klingt lustig:

http://prokrastination.com/

die herrschaften passig und lobo in hoechstform... hoffentlich.

"It lays low the king's head by the wayside so that his hair sweeps the wayside dust as he whispers lewd words to himself and laughs and sticks out his tongue. Such is the nature of love."

Knut Hamsun, 2007: Victoria. Souvenir Press, pp. 36-37.

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.

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.

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.

bizarre

(picture taken from postsecret.)

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.

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.