Vallum Poem of the Week: “Notes Towards Nine Pietas” by Moez Surani

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poem, poetry, poetry reading

 

 

Notes Towards Nine Pietas

Two large, smooth, featureless mounds of marble. Graceful and
abstracted shapes. Ideal, cool, conveying intensity, proximity despite
their gap, immutability and a transcendent serenity.

Two standard fluorescent tube lights. Christ is pink. Mary is an
unreal blue.

Sheet metal in a an enclosed space that is smooth and shining and
spotlit with so much wattage that looking at is unbearable and you
have to squint and turn away.

Flaking coal or shale.

The biggest living fruit tree available. Spread across the arms of the
lowest branches, a disconsolate and somewhat deflated rubber fish.

Planks of wood balanced precariously together without any nails.
The stigmata are holes. It can collapse once a day—clattering over
the floor—and is rebuilt each morning.

A fountain. Mary is a wide curl of wave. Christ is a jet of corroborating water.

Two empty and intersecting clues on a huge crossword. Black and white.
Numbers in the corners.

A huge pool with an anguished diving board. Many fish inside the pool.
So many lights and shards of glass on the pool floor and suspended in
the water that the fish swim in torment, danger and ecstasy.

Moez Surani’s poetry has been published internationally, including in Harper’s Magazine, The Awl, The Walrus, Best Canadian Poetry 2013 and Best Canadian Poetry 2014. He is the author of two poetry collections: Reticent Bodies and Floating Life. His third poetry book, عملية Operación Opération Operation 行动 Oперация, will be published in fall, 2016.

To view other poems published in this issue please visit Vallum’s website.

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Featured Review: THE POETIC EDDA. Translated by Jeramy Dodds. Review by Eleni Zisimatos.

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eleni zisimatos, jeramy dodds, poetry, poetry review, review

The Poetic Edda (Toronto, ON: Coach House Books, 2014, $23.95, 280 pages). Translated by Jeramy Dodds. Review by Eleni Zisimatos.

This translation of Old Norse and Icelandic poems by Jeramy Dodds is an exceptional work of Canadian poetic achievement. The book is divided into three sections: “Mythological Poems,” “Heroic Poems,” and “Poems Not in The Codex Regius,” all of which have their own impetus and flavour. The first section is lighter, more playful; replete with sayings and advice from the old, wise ones. “Heroic Poems” is more involved and deals more with heroes and heroines, deeds, mishaps, and destinies. The last section follows along the lines of “Heroic Poems,” where we encounter strong imagery like: “‘Dan and Damp have costly halls, / more lavish lands than you; / they know how to sail, how to make / a sword bite, run the red from a wound.’”

This book brings to light the background for the Tolkien myths, brings to the forefront Viking legends—the Norse mythology we often don’t realize we are engaged with when we read about Valkyries, the undead, and magic lore. The original Icelandic poems were written by Christian scribes in Iceland around the thirteenth century, which undoubtedly were influenced by the struggle between Pagan and Christian beliefs. Kings and Queens abound throughout the volume, as do witches and magic, and the all-important ash tree, Yggdrasil. The text jumps to attention with passages like:

………………………….‘His teeth flash when he sees
………………………….his sword, or when he eyes Bodvild’s
………………………….ring. His stare is as sharp as a shiny
………………………….serpent’s. I say slice his sinews
………………………….and set him near Saevarstadir.’

There are numerous translations such as this one throughout the three sections—all lending freedom to the imagination and bringing us back in time to our own imagined mythology of these wild people.

If I was pressed to find a weakness in the book, I would say that there is sometimes (not often) a break between high and low language. For instance, a passage such as: “Whoever can rear heirs as astonishing / As those Gjuki sired would be happy. / Their courage will live on in every land / wherever people hear it,” is largely formal and contrasts with the more colloquial “‘Shut up, Freyja, I know you / all too well, you’re not flawless—you’ve been the bitch of every / Elf and Aesir on the benches here.’” But to be fair, there are differences in the style of the two texts (located in two different sections), and I could only judge properly if I read the poems in the original Icelandic.

I was also somewhat bothered by the opening epigraph that was not translated (I am a great fan of epigraphs). To make up for this minor oversight, Jeramy Dodds included an exhaustive and impressive “Annotated Index of Names” at the end of the book, an undertaking which I know from experience can drive a writer to distraction.

The Poetic Edda is a brilliant book—playful and imaginative. The language flows crisply and effortlessly in the hands of Dodds, and is accessible to both young and old readers. This translation is akin to Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf, and is a notable addition to Canadian writing and translation.

Eleni Zisimatos is co-Editor-in-Chief of Vallum Magazine. She lives in Montreal.

This review was published in issue 12:1 “Surrender.” To see more from this issue, please visit Vallum‘s website.

Vallum magazine is also available in digital format. Featuring additional content such as: AUDIO and VIDEO recordings of selected poets, further poems, interviews, essays, and MORE!

Download the FREE APP and FREE SAMPLE EDITION for your tablet, kindle or smartphone through PocketMags OR iTunes

Vallum Award for Poetry 2015 Shortlist!

RICHARD CUMMINGS
“Structural Dead Load”
(USA)

FRANK PALLESCHI
“Unreal Spring”
(Canada)

D.S. STYMEIST
“Artifact: The Levellois Point”
(Canada)

ALYCIA PIRMOHAMED
“They Were There”
(Canada)

GRACE VERMEER
“Finding the Field with No Roads”
(Canada)

JEAN-MARK SENS
“Kitchen Scissors”
(USA)

DAVID MARTIN
“Slack Sapling”
(Canada)

K.V. SKENE
“Reservoir Effects”
(Canada)

SUSAN MCCASLIN
“Cezanne’s Geological Practice”
(Canada)

MICHAEL FRASER
“N-Word”
(Canada)

ADRIENNE DROBNIES
“Gold Mountain Miniature”
(Canada)

JOHN SIBLEY WILLIAMS
“It Was a Golden Age of Monsters”
(USA)

MAXENCE YAELLE
“The Outsider”
(Canada)

K.T. BILLEY
“Girl Gives Birth to Thunder”
(Canada)

MARJORIE BRUHMULLER
“In the Hum”
(Canada)

LAWRENCE MATSUDA
“Examining Life’s Sharp Angles”
(USA)

LELAND JAMES
“Requiem for a Death in Passing”
(USA)

PHOEBE WANG
“The Chinese Garden”
(Canada)

JOAN CRATE
“Vicarious”
(Canada)

CARLOS ANDRES GOMEZ
“Flesh and Blood”
(USA)

CLINT SMITH
“Zero Gravity”
(USA)

APRIL HARVEY
“My Two Cedars”
(Canada)

Thank you to everyone who entered this year’s contest.
The winners and honorable mentions will be announced one week from today.
Winning poems will appear in issue 13:1 “Open Call.”

To see previous contest winners, click HERE!

Vallum Poem of the Week: “Fan Fiction” by Aaron Kreuter

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poem, poetry, poetry reading

 

 

Fan Fiction

 

I.

Why didn’t Dumbledore do more
as the trains glided into Auschwitz?

Was he honestly too busy in his own affairs
to redirect the train tracks, turn
the showers into the safe rooms of a forest,
the chimneys into towering oak?

II.

A Tense Press Conference

What’s the Ministry of Magic’s
position on nuclear proliferation,
on off-shore drilling, on deforestation?

Does the Minister intend to keep
their commitments agreed to
in the Kyoto protocol?

Does the Wizengamut acknowledge
the existential threat of shale gas
fracking?

III.

Hopefully it’s only a matter of time
before Hermione gives some serious thought
to where the food on her plate comes from.

IV.

Even Voldemort, safe in the knowledge
of his horcruxes, anchors
on his life’s tenuous web, even he

should give heed to the remaining
untouched places on the earth,
those hedges against our ignorance,
horcruxes of a different breed,

that, once gone, no amount of will
could magic back to save us.

Aaron Kreuter is a writer of fiction and poetry currently based in Toronto, where he is pursuing a PhD in English literature at York University. His first poetry collection, Arguments For Lawn Chairs, is forthcoming from Guernica Editions. “Fan Fiction” was included in the Best Canadian Poetry 2014 anthology. Learn more at his website aaronkreuter.com.

To view other poems published in this issue please visit Vallum’s website.

Vallum Poem of the Week: “Ladder to the Moon” by X.J. Kennedy

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poem, poetry, poetry reading

 

 

Ladder to the Moon

If I had a ladder that reached to the moon
Up its millions of rungs I would go,
Up higher than ever the clouds can fly
Till the earth was a ball below.

I’d put on my warm wool winter coat
And my long scarlet scarf in case
While I climbed my ladder right up to the moon
It should start to snow in space.

I’d sidestep a couple of shooting stars
I’d stand on the steepest hill
At the top of my ladder to the moon
If only the moon stood still.

X.J. Kennedy (real name Joe) professed at Tufts University until he quit to write textbooks, including An Introduction to Poetry, now in its 13th edition and coauthored with Dana Gioia. His first book of verse was Nude Descending a Staircase (Doubleday, 1961); his latest are In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus: new and selected poems (Johns Hopkins U. Press), Peeping Tom’s Cabin: comic verse (BOA), and Fits of Concision: collected poems of six or fewer lines (Grolier Poetry Book Shop). A first novel for adults, A Hoarse Half-human Cheer: an entertainment (Curtis Brown Unlimited), came out this year. He has also written twenty children’s books, most recently City Kids (Vancouver: Tradewind Books). A former poetry editor of the Paris Review, Kennedy has received the Poets’ Prize, the 2015 Jackson Poetry Prize, and the Robert Frost gold medal of the Poetry Society of America. He lives in Lexington, Massachusetts, with Dorothy M. Kennedy, coauthor of several books and five children.

To view other poems published in this issue please visit Vallum’s website.

Vallum Poem of the Week: “Ballad of the Gambler’s Shadow” by Sebastien Wen

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poem, poetry, poetry reading

 

Sebastien Wen – Ballad of the Gambler’s Shadow

 

Ballad of the Gambler’s Shadow

New York, 1971

In my version of a beautiful lie, my kind of reality
we lock ourselves up in some dim-lit nowhere hut
strapped to the Yukon and just make love like it’s
hard labour, ’til out bodies are honey and raw

and in the evenings we play each other’s guts out
like mind-knives doing a death-waltz in this thickness
of the black. No limit, PLO, Open Face Chinese,
Fantasy Land, Chess, Backgammon, Rummy,
we let language drip into game theory
and then stick our tongues deep in our gifts

Sometimes in the mornings you blare hot blues
on the steel harp while the sun smokes and rises hard
over the teeth of the freezing mountains
your notes twist and twitch in the wind and I watch
your neck like I’d watch the player on my left
checking out the hand the dealer gave him
on the short-stack

That’s what my beautiful lie looks like

Only problem is
I don’t you know who are
I doubt you’d even wanna move to the Yukon
you’d probably be all bitch n’ moan
about the mosquitoes and the grey food

You ask me
“Why would you ever want to leave New York anyway?”

and I admit to you that I’m just too soft for the city.
cardshark who can’t swim. I beg myself to find
the land and slip my shade. Why’d I even tell you?
Why’d I try? Why’d I even ask
if you’d come with me?

 

Sebastien Wen is a nineteen year old poet and spoken word artist based out of Vancouver. He is UBC’s 2013 slam champion. He was a member of the 2013 Calgary slam team. He has featured as a performer in numerous Canadian festivals. He studies Honours English Literature at UBC.

 

To view other poems published in this issue please visit Vallum’s website here:

http://www.vallummag.com/archives_11_1.html