Poetry Readers Challenge discussion

Tomas Transtromer is the kind of poet I ought to love. For one thing, he has a gift for coming up with extended metaphors that ring entirely true and yet are so deliciously fresh that you can almost smell them:

“At road’s end I see power
and it’s like an onion
with overlapping faces
coming loose one by one..."

Transtromer's gift for conjuring outlandish-yet-precise metaphors reminded me of Yehuda Amichai, long one of my favorite poets. It also reminded me of Aristotle, who, in his Poetics, praised such inspired metaphor-making as "the greatest gift by far [that a poet can have], the one thing that cannot be learnt from others."

Why, then, did I not love this book as much as I loved, say, my treasured tome of Yehuda Amichai poems? I think it had something to do with the voice in Transtromer's poems. This voice was always the same voice, the voice of a European man who might well be Transtromer himself, the voice of a mild-mannered person who is always standing as if at a window and calmly observing things (nature, society, etc.) from the outside, from a distance. (Railroads and postal mail are frequently recurring motifs in Transtromer's poems, symbols of the large distances between human beings that make Transtromer's emotional distance from his subjects all the more conspicuous.) I was not at all surprised to learn that Transtromer at one time worked as a clinical psychologist, as people who work in the clinical professions are specially trained to manifest this kind of equanimity, impersonality, and emotional detachment in their dealings with others. It's a feature that some clinician-writers succeed in transcending in their writing, but which many unfortunately do not. Transtromer does sometimes transcend it, and when he does, his poems are magnificent, as in the case of the refreshingly fury-laced poem "Schubertiana":

"Annie said, 'This music is so heroic,' and she's right.
But those whose eyes enviously follow men of action, who secretly despise themselves for not being murderers,
don't recognize themselves here,
and the many who buy and sell people and believe that everyone can be bought, don't recognize themselves here.
Not their music."

How I enjoyed seeing the fire break through the ice in this poem! Even when such marvelous duende is absent, though, there is much in Transtromer's poems to catch one's interest, from an intellectual standpoint. This poet is the product of many far-flung influences, and it tickled me to watch him pay homage to such unexpected intellectual forebears as Thoreau and Whitman, the latter of whom he evokes in the poem "Traffic":

"downward, to the openings, to the deep tubes
where the algae grow like the beards of the dead"

Another poet whom I was surprised to see Transtromer show an affinity for was Paul Celan, whose ghost seemed to hover over Transtromer's poem "Night Duty":

“The language marches in step with the executioners.
Therefore we must get a new language.”

Overall, I am glad I read this book. Poems like "Allegro," "Slow Music," and "The Gallery" will be treats to return to in years to come.

Since you guys seemed to enjoy my recent review of Joshua Mehigan's Accepting the Disaster, I guess I may as well mention that when I read Transtromer's "Slow Music", I was put in mind of Mehigan's "The Hill". In both these poems, the real nature of the subject matter (that is, human mortality) creeps up on the reader very slowly in a way that sends shivers down the spine.

I dutifully read through this book a couple of years ago, after Tranströmer won the Nobel Prize. I liked it in parts.

Thanks for reviewing it.

"Liked it in parts" sounds about right. I was actually peer-pressured into giving this book 4 stars by a friend who was horrified that I would even consider awarding it fewer than 4 (I had been on the fence between giving it 3 and 4 stars).

After I posted my review, I searched Goodreads for all reviews on the site that had given this book fewer than 4 stars. There weren't very many, and none of them were particularly well-argued. Thus, I would be very curious to hear why the members of this group either liked or didn't like this book -- I'm still trying to understand my own reasons for reacting to it in the mixed way that I did.

I suspect that in order to fully appreciate it you need to have lived in a place where it's dark for 18 hours a day.

He's so beloved and many of his poems really shine. But when I read this I felt the parts were somehow more than the sum, if that makes sense.
Schubertiana is surely one of his best poems.
Appreciated your review, Jenna, as always.

The "liked it in parts" phrase certainly resonates.

Hey Jenna, sorry I've been missing for a couple of weeks. I think you nailed it with "emotional distance." I haven't read this volume but have either a selected or perhaps a section with his work in an anthology that covered Scandinavian writers. I knew of his reputation and was a little disgruntled that he left me cold. I could respect what he had done but wasn't excited by it.

As for ratings, I think some people rating poetry are influenced by reputation (both the poet's and wanting to pump up their own by appearing sophisticated) and instead of rating what they've read according to their reaction to it, which to me is what a rating should be about. I do reserve the right to change my opinion if I'm shown something that makes me experience the work in a more engaged way. But I see nothing wrong with acknowledging, via a lukewarm rating, that I respect a work but it didn't move me. I'm not aware of any requirement that I admire work just because it's considered as great by others. I'm fine acknowledging what they see in it as valid and maintaining my position that the artistry doesn't move me.

Thanks for reading and commenting, Jen.

My ratings of books on Goodreads tend to skew high (I don't think I've ever given a book a one-star rating, for example), for a mix of reasons. One reason is that I tend to be very selective about which books I start reading and even more selective about which books I finish reading, so it's unlikely that I would ever finish reading a book I absolutely detested. The ratings I assign reflect a combination of objective and subjective factors. I have a tendency to give inflated ratings when the author is still alive and there is a chance they might come across my review, but I always try to absolutely honest in the review itself.

...To finish my previous thought (the computer at which I'm sitting won't let me edit a post once it's been posted), I think the reviews are a million times more important than the numerical star ratings, anyway.

I agree with being prudent when reviewing and that the review is what counts. When a work really leaves me flat, I'll review it here without officially reviewing it on goodreads or rating it. As you note, when that's the case, it's often a newer or less well known poet and I don't want to foul their waters when they're growing and experimenting even if I didn't like their current efforts.

Here's Transtromer's obituary (he passed away Thursday) in the Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/28/boo...