John McPhee

John McPhee [Ned Stuckey-French]

from John McPhee's "Cooling the Lava" in The Control of Nature:

Hearing a sound like a chain saw's, I looked down to see a motorcycle climbing the new volcano. The rider wiped out as he approached the crater rim. The motorcycle, pinwheeling, spun downhill in a sputtering swirl of tephra. Ash over teakettle, the rider tumbled, too. At last arresting his fall, he got up, ran after his loose machine, trapped it, then resumed the steep climb. Reaching the top, he zipped around the narrow rim. He stopped for a moment, contemplating. Then he plunged hundreds of feet down the dark-red slope inside the crater all they way to the bottom, under control. Motorcycles seem to have more prestige in Iceland than in, say, Greenwich, Connecticut, or Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. All over the new volcano, white-painted automobile tires mark the established tracks and competitive routes of what were described to me as "the largest, most powerful, most beautiful motorcycles in Iceland."

Where the lava went eastward into the sea, some of the new cliffs are a hundred feet high. Waves occasionally break over them. After a Belgian trawler crashed there in 1981, waves threw pieces of the trawler up on top of the cliffs. Rocks weighing half a ton have been tossed up there, too. It was at the base of one such cliff that Gudlaugur Fridthorsson first landed on the night of his long swim. In two places, bays with rocks beaches have indented this new coastline. One is called Baetur the Beach of the Insurance Claim. The other is Vidlagafjara the Beach of the Catastrophe Fund. The rocks, whether they are the size of potatoes, grapefruit, watermelons, water beds, or motor buses, are all rounded. Most are so cavitated by former gas bubbles that they suggest black coral, or models of the human brain. It was discovered on Surtsey and confirmed on Heimaey that such boulders do not require thousands of years to assume their shape but can be rounded by a single storm. During the eruption, a lighthouse on the eastern shore went below the lava. A new lighthouse stands above the Beach of the Insurance Claim.

Iceland

Lupinus nootkatensis, Alaskan lupine

the ornamental word

the figure, the accessory form

or colour or reference

is rarely content to die to thought

precisely at the right moment

but will inevitably linger

stirring a long brain-wave behind it

of quite alien associations

                                          — Walter Pater

I spun the mildewed pillow to the least gruesome corner, slept there

the meditative poet, sheltering self

from the agitations of the outward world

is in reality only clearing the scene

for the great exhibitions of emotion

                                                       — Ibid.

miles of lupine in lava

of dandelion

damp rock draped with pale brown moss

green moss

runners of cream flower

tufts of easter pink

rock sculpture

more cairns than a traveler needs

an Arctic Kona

Taraxacum offinale, dandelion

The more you see the country

the more you do not wonder why they shut the door.

                                                                               — Gertrude Stein

windows by Mondrian

quadrangled glass in thick, extruded frames

houses white with bright roofs

or houses bright

sheathed in corrugated iron

or concrete mixed with gray sand

I have often noticed how easy it is to have cement around because everywhere there are rocks & so everywhere if you have the necessary building & equipment you have cement. And in the country, it looks strange, it makes it look like dryness or like snow, like Russia or like sand, like a ruin or like a fog, oh dear some people like to live & look at it & some must, or dear, stop when they see it, oh dear.

                               — Ibid.

life is brutish

& short

improvement is illusory

though grand

love is unforeseen

& unattainable

                      & real

fishes engraved on coins

Reykjavik

Lawrence Millman

Lawrence Millman [Geophysical Institute]

from Lawrence Millman's Last Places: A Journey in the North:

Eyvindur Jónsson was born in 1714 and enjoyed a quite normal childhood except for his constant desire to steal. He started out with small things, like household utensils, and then worked his way up to livestock. Finally, after a large quantity of stolen sheep were found in his possession, the Althing proclaimed him an outlaw. Now he took to the mountains and pursued his trade in earnest, stealing sheep morning, noon, and night from rich and poor alike. No account of his career ever mentions personal gain or a violent craving for mutton. Eyvindur simply stole sheep as some other talented lad might have written verse. Indeed, one of the few descriptions of him warns his potential victims that "he is frequently heard humming strophes of rimur or old songs." He would arrive at a farm — incognito, of course — and first win the farmer's trust. Then he'd make off with the man's sheep, as if it were wrong just to descend on the farm and steal the sheep. When it came time for him to marry, he made certain the woman of his heart, a young widow named Halla Jónsdottir, shared his interest in sheep thievery. If a farmer or sheriff got too hot on their trail, Eyvindur and Halla would disappear into the uncharted interior. Eyvindur himself was no faster on his feet than the next man, but he had a strategy that enabled him to escape even his swiftest pursuers — he turned cartwheels. An entrancing vision this is: a lone outlaw cartwheeling wildly over lava and sand, as the forces of law and order lag ever farther behind him.

"Eyvindur hid here," Gisli said, "during the winter of 1774-5. He had a dead horse for a roof. He ate the meat from this horse and by spring the sun was shining through its bones. A year later he was pardoned. Twenty years he'd been an outlaw. The government won't let you be an outlaw longer than that."

I looked at this heap of stones and tried to imagine someone living there. In its prime it would not have measured more than five feet by three feet, hardly enough room to turn a single enervated cartwheel in. But Iceland seems to prepare a person for the stoniest of conditions and fosters in him the most creative of survival tactics: if a dead horse is your roof, at least it keeps out the weather.

Whereas Eyvindur stole sheep, Bensi retrieved them. He was a scruffy, snuff-taking farm laborer whose job it was to find missing sheep. Once he struggled for days to bring back a single sheep to Grimstad farm, but then he lost it. This legendary effort — only a slightly dotty person like Bensi would have been so worried about a lone sheep — provided Gunnar Gunnarson with the idea for his 1944 novella The Good Shepherd, which is about a snuff-taking shepherd's failure to retrieve a sheep during a Christmas Eve blizzard. According to Gisli, Ernest Hemingway cribbed The Good Shepherd for his novella The Old Man and the Sea ("Every Icelander knows how Hemingway stole from Gunnar Gunnarson"), turning Bensi into the old Cuban fisherman, the sheep into the tenacious marlin, and the Christmas Eve blizzard — this I found a little improbable — into the Caribbean Sea.

"I've often wondered why he committed suicide," Gisli said.

"Who? Bensi?"

"Nej, Hemingway. Do you suppose he felt guilty about stealing from Gunnar Gunnarson?"

Halldór Laxness

[wallpoper]

from Halldór Laxness’s Under the Glacier:

Some years ago, a horse was swept over the falls to Goðafoss. He was washed ashore, alive, onto the rocks below. The beast stood there motionless, hanging his head, for more than twenty-four hours below this awful cascade of water that had swept him down. Perhaps he was trying to remember what life was called. Or he was wondering why the world had been created. He showed no signs of ever wanting to graze again. In the end, however, he heaved himself onto the river bank and started to nibble.

Halldór Laxness (center) [arnim.blog.is]

3 February 2014

William Jackson Hooker [Harvard University Herbaria]

from William Jackson Hooker’s Journal of a Tour in Iceland, in the Summer of 1809:

On the cloth was nothing but a plate, a knife and fork, a wine glass, and a bottle of claret, for each guest, except that in the middle stood a large and handsome glass-castor of sugar, with a magnificent silver top. The natives are not in the habit of drinking malt liquor or water, nor is it customary to eat salt with their meals. The dishes are brought in singly: our first was a large turenne of soup, which is a favorite addition to the dinners of the richer people, and is made of sago, claret, and raisins, boiled so as to become almost a mucilage. We were helped to two soup-plates full of this, which we ate without knowing if any thing more was to come. No sooner, however, was the soup removed, than two large salmon, boiled and cut in slices, were brought on, and, with them, melted butter, looking like oil, mixed with vinegar and pepper; this, likewise, was very good, and we with some difficulty cleared our plates, earnestly hoping we had finished our dinners. Not so; for there was then introduced a turenne full of the eggs of the Cree, or great tern, boiled hard, of which a dozen were put upon each of our plates; and, for sauce, we had a large basin of cream, mixed with sugar, in which were four spoons, so that we all ate out of the same bowl, placed in the middle of the table. We petitioned hard to be excused from eating the whole of the eggs upon our plates, but we petitioned in vain. "You are my guests," said he," and this is the first time you have done me the honor of a visit, therefore, you must do as I would have you; in future, when you come to see me, you may do as you like." In his own excuse, he pleaded his age for not following our example, to which we could make no reply. We devoured with difficulty our eggs and cream; but had no sooner dismissed our plates, than half a sheep, well roasted, came on, with a mess of sorrel (Rumex acetosa), called by the Danes scurvy-grass, boiled, meshed, and sweetened with sugar. It was to no purpose we assured our host that we had already eaten more than would do us good: he filled our plates with the mutton and sauce, and made us get through it as well as we could; although any one of the dishes, of which we had before partaken, was sufficient for the dinner of a moderate man. However, even this was not al ; for a large dish of Waffels, as they are here called, that is to say, a sort of pancake, made of wheat-flour, flat, and roasted in a mould, which forms a number of squares on the top, succeeded the mutton. They were not more than half an inch thick, and about the size of an octavo book. The Stiftsamptman said he would be satisfied if each of us would eat two of them, and, with these moderate terms, we were forced to comply. For bread, Norway biscuit and loaves made of rye, were served up; for our drink, we had nothing but claret, of which we were all compelled to empty the bottle that stood by us, and this, too, out of tumblers, rather than wine glasses. It is not the custom in this country to sit after dinner over the wine, but we had, instead of it, to drink just as much coffee as our host thought proper to give us. The coffee was certainly extremely good, and, we trusted it would terminate the feast; but all was not yet over ; for a huge bowl of rum- punch was brought in, and handed round in large glasses pretty freely, and to every glass a toast was given. If at any time we flagged in drinking, "Baron Banks" was always the signal for emptying our glasses, in order that we might have them filled with bumpers, to drink to his health; a task that no Englishman ought to hesitate about complying with most gladly, though assuredly, if any exception might be made to such a rule, it would be in an instance like the present. We were threatened with still another bowl, after we should have drained this; and, accordingly, another actually came, which we were with difficulty allowed to refuse to empty entirely; nor could this be done, but by ordering our people to get the boat ready for our departure, when, having concluded this extraordinary feast by three cups of tea each, we took our leave, and reached Reikevig about ten o'clock; but did not for some time recover from the effects of this most involuntary intemperance.

W. H. Auden & Louis MacNeice

W. H. Auden & Louis MacNeice in Iceland [coup!]

from W. H. Auden & Louis MacNeice’s Letters from Iceland:

a letter from WHA to Christopher Isherwood [excerpt]

If you have no particular intellectual interests or ambitions and are content with the company of your family and friends, then life on Iceland must be very pleasant, because the inhabitants are friendly, tolerant and sane. They are genuinely proud of their country and its history, but without the least trace of hysterical nationalism. I always found that they welcomed criticism. But I had the feeling, also, that for myself it was already too late. We are all too deeply involved with Europe to be able, or even to wish to escape. Though I am sure you would enjoy a visit as much as I did, I think that, in the long run, the Scandinavian sanity would be too much for you, as it is for me. The truth is, we are both only really happy living among lunatics. . . .

For Tourists [excerpt]

Food.

In the larger hotels in Reykjavik you will of course get ordinary European food, but in the farms you will only get what there is, which is on the whole rather peculiar.

Breakfast: (9.0 a.m.) If you stay in a farm this will be brought to you in bed. Coffee, bread and cheese, and small cakes. Coffee, which is drunk all through the day — I must have drunk about 1,500 cups in three months — is generally good. There is white bread, brown bread, rock-hard but quite edible, and unleavened rye bread like cake. The ordinary cheese is like a strong Dutch and good. There is also a brown sweet cheese, like the Norwegian. I don’t like cakes so I never ate any, but other people say they are good.

Lunch and Dinner: (12 noon and 7 p.m.). If you are staying anywhere, lunch is the chief meal, but farmers are always willing to give you a chief meal at any time of the day or night if you care. (I once had supper at 11 p.m.).

Soups: Many of these are sweet and very unfortunate. I remember three with particular horror, one of sweet milk and hard macaroni, one tasting of hot marzipan, and one of scented hair oil. (But there is a good sweet soup, raspberry coloured, made of bilberry. L. M.)

Fish: Dried fish is a staple food in Iceland. This should be shredded with the fingers and eaten with butter. It varies in toughness. The tougher kind tastes like toe-nails, and the softer kind like the skin off the soles of one’s feet.

In districts where salmon are caught, or round the coast, you get excellent fish, the grilled salmon particularly.

Meat: This is practically confined to mutton in various forms. The Danes have influenced Icelandic cooking, and to no advantage. Meat is liable to be served up in glutinous and half-cold lumps, covered with tasteless gravy. At the poorer farms you will get only Hángikyrl, i.e. smoked mutton. This comparatively harmless when cold as it only tastes like soot, but it would take a very hungry man indeed to eat it hot.

Vegetables: Apart from potatoes, these, in the earlier part of the summer are conspicuous by their absence. Later, however, there are radishes, turnips, carrots, and lettuce in sweet milk. Newish potatoes begin to appear about the end of August. Boiled potatoes are eaten with melted butter, but beware of the browned potatoes, as they are coated in sugar, another Danish barbarism.

Fruit: None, except rhubarb and in the late summer excellent bilberries.

Cold food: Following the Scandinavian custom, in the hotels, following the hot dish there are a number of dishes of cold meats and fishes eaten with bread and butter. Most of these are good, particularly the pickled herring. Smoked salmon in my opinion is an overrated dish, but it is common for those who appreciate it.

Sweets: The standard sweet is skyr, a cross between Devonshire cream and a cream cheese, which is eaten with sugar and cream. It is very filling but most people like it very much. It is not advisable, however, to take coffee and skyr together just before riding, as it gives you diarrhoea.

Tea: (4 p.m.). Coffee, cakes, and if you are lucky, pancakes with cream. These are wafer-thick and extremely good. Coffee and cake are also often brought to you in the evening, about 10 p.m. Those who like tea or cocoa should bring it with them and supervise the making of it themselves. . . .

Oddities

For the curious there are two Icelandic foods which should certainly be tried. One is Hákarl, which is half-dry, half-rotten shark. This is white inside with a prickly horn rind outside, as tough as an old boot. Owing to the smell it has to be eaten out of doors. It is shaved off with a knife and eaten with brandy. It tastes more like boot-polish than anything else I can think of. The other is Reyngi. This is the tail of the whale, which is pickled in sour milk for a year or so. If you intend to try it, do not visit a whaling station first. Incidently, talking about pickling in sour milk, the Icelanders also do this to sheeps’ udders, and the result is surprisingly very nice.

22 January 2014

Bayard Taylor [Library of Congress]

People ask me why are you going to Iceland, or they say that’s on my bucket list, too: people assume I’m going by myself, & they’re right though a poet or three might join me for a few days: I won’t know until they do or don’t: by myself I’ll count on my wits & when offered, local kindness: I’m reading the sagas now to learn about skyr, about the Thing, about treachery, violence, weather, volcanoes: I already read Laxness to learn about sheep.

Housekeepers

The wives

Hallgerda & Bergthora

one, then the other

command a house-carle

to kill the other’s house-carle

& is obeyed.

Together

at Thingskala-Thing

the husbands

Gunnar & Njal

confess & rue the slaughters,

settle to make peace,

hand atonement

back & forth

always the same purse.

21 January 2014

from Mrs. Alec (Ethel Brilliana, née Harley) Tweedie's A Girl's Ride in Iceland, 1894:

As the London season, with its thousand and one engagements, that one tries to cram into the shortest possible time, draws to a close, the question uppermost in every one's mind is, 'Where shall we go this autumn?' And a list of places well trodden by tourists pass through the brain in rapid succession, each in turn rejected as too far, too near, too well known, or not embracing a sufficient change of scene. 

Switzerland? Every one goes to Switzerland: that is no rest, for one meets half London there. Germany? The same answer occurs, and so on ad infinitum. 

'Suppose we make up a party and visit Iceland?' was suggested by me to one of my friends on a hot July day as we sat chatting together discussing this weighty question, fanning ourselves meanwhile under a temperature of ninety degrees; the position of Iceland, with its snow-capped hills and cool temperature seeming positively refreshing and desirable. Mad as the idea seemed when first proposed in mere banter, it ended, as these pages will prove, by our turning the suggestion into a reality, and overcoming the difficulties of a trip which will ever remain engraven on my memory as one of the most agreeable experiences of my life. 

When I ventilated the idea outside my private 'den,' wherein it first arose, it was treated as far too wild a scheme for serious consideration--for 'Iceland,' to Londoners, seems much the same in point of compass as the moon! And there really is some similarity in the volcanic surface of both. Here, however, the similarity ends, for while the luminary is indeed inaccessible, the island can easily be reached without any very insurmountable difficulty. 

The somewhat natural opposition which our plan at first met with, only stimulated our desire the more to carry it into effect. The first step was to gain the permission of our parents, which, after some reluctance, was granted, and the necessary ways and means finally voted; our next was to collect together a suitable party from our numerous friends, and take all necessary measures to secure the success of the undertaking. . . .

Before proceeding any further, it may be well to mention the important subjects of outfit and provisions. As we were not going upon a fashionable tour, it was not necessary to provide ourselves with anything but what was really needed. Intending travellers must recollect that, as all inland journeys are performed on ponies, and the luggage can only be slung across the animals' backs, large boxes or trunks are out of the question, and it is necessary to compress one's outfit into the smallest possible dimensions. The following list will be found quite sufficient for the journey.

A thick serge dress, short and plain for rough wear, with a cloth one in change; a tight-fitting thick jacket, good mackintosh, and very warm fur cloak; one pair of high mackintosh riding boots (like fisherman's waders), necessary for crossing rivers and streams; a yachting cap or small tight-fitting hat, with a projecting peak to protect the eyes from the glare--blue glasses, which are a great comfort; thick gauntlet gloves; a habit skirt is not necessary. 

My brother has given me a list of things he found most useful. Two rough homespun or serge suits: riding breeches, which are absolutely indispensable; riding boots laced up the centre, and large, as they are continually getting wet; flannel shirts; thick worsted stockings; a warm ulster, and mackintosh. 

Instead of trusting to the pack boxes provided by the natives, a soft waterproof 'hold-all,' or mule boxes, would be an additional comfort. . . .

The immediate neighbourhood of the Geysers is not pretty; hills rise on one side, but otherwise they lie in a plain, which, when we saw it on our first arrival, was so thickly covered with sand from the storm that we could hardly discern any separate object. We hastened to examine the great Geyser. Alas! it did not, and would not play; it had done so two days previously, and we were told it was expected to renew the exploit, but, to our great mortification, it failed to do so during our visit. One of the peculiarities of this natural phenomenon is that sometimes at intervals of only a few hours it will eject columns of boiling water to the height of 100 feet, at others it will remain silent for days together. In 1770 it is recorded that this Geyser spouted eleven times in one day. Disappointed at losing the sight we had come so far to see, we turned our attention to the 'Stroker,' which is situated about 90 feet from its bigger neighbour. This also seemed in a quiescent state, but as the 'Stroker' can always be made to play by filling up the opening with earth sods, until there is no hole for the steam to escape, and it vomits the whole mass with a gigantic spout, we requested our guides to arrange for this artificial display. The emetic was consequently administered. 'Stroker' was evidently sulky, for the process had to be gone through no less than four times, whilst we waited the result in patience for at least two hours; but the display was all the better when it came. 

I said we waited in patience, which was hardly true, as we were all on the tiptoe of excitement. Continual false alarms, and we all rushed to the 'Stroker's' side, only to be again disappointed, so we unpacked our goods, and made preparations for our evening meal, examining the Great Geyser and the hot springs meanwhile, grumbled at the smell of sulphur, and nearly despaired of the eruption ever taking place, when a sudden start from our guides, who were standing on the edge of the crater, and a shriek from them, 'He comes!' and a huge column of water ascended straight into the air for about 60 feet, the spray being ejected to a considerable distance. The eruption was accompanied by a rumbling noise and a hissing sound, as the shafts of water ascended. 

We stood and watched the effect a few feet distant merely from this boiling column, feeling the rumbling distinctly under our feet and as the wind blew the steam back, it fell like rain, quite cold, but with sufficient force to wet us uncomfortably.

This great fountain display continued in full force a quarter of an hour; then the column gradually got smaller, though steam and water issued from its mouth for a full half-hour before it quite subsided. It was a splendid spectacle, and one which left a great impression on our minds; the height of the column was fully 60 feet, and even after it had subsided, we remained some time in contemplation of its cause and effect.

17 January 2014

Halldór Laxness [heimur]

from Halldór Laxness’s Independent People:

The first thing that this midwife mentioned on entering Summerhouses was the smell; the stalls beneath were offensive with the damp of earthen walls and fish refuse, while the room upstairs stank of death, and a reeking lamp, the wick dry again, the last flame guttering, ready to die. The housekeeper demanded fresh air. She spread a coverlet over the corpse in the empty bedstead. Then she turned her attention to the child. But the dog refused to leave it, nursing it still; a mother, thirsty and famished, and yet no one thinks of rewarding an animal for its virtues. The housekeeper tried to drive her away, but she made as if to snap at her, so Bjartur had to take her by the scruff of the neck and throw her down the ladder. But when the child was now examined, it showed no signs of life whatever. The woman tried turning it upside down and swinging it in various directions, even taking it to the outer door and turning its face into the wind, but all to no purpose; this wrinkled, sorrowful being that so uninvited, so undesired, had been sent into the world appeared to have lost all desire to claim its rights therein.

But this housekeeper, who had been widowed when young, refused to believe that the child could possible be dead; she herself knew what it meant to be confined when blizzards were raging in the dales. She heated some water on her oil-stove, the second time that preparations were made to bathe this infant, and soon the water was hot, and the woman bathed the child and even let it lie for a good while in the water that was much more than hot, with the tip of its nose sticking up. Bjartur inquired whether she intended boiling the thing, but apparently she did not hear what he said, and as the child still showed no signs of life, she took it out and, holding it by one leg, swung it about in the air with its head downward. Bjartur began to feel rather worried; he had followed everything with great interest so far, but this was more than he could stand, and he felt he had better ask mercy for the unfortunate creature. “Are you trying to put the kid’s hips out of joint, damn you?” he inquired.

Whereupon Gudny, as if she had not been aware of his presence before, retorted sharply: “That’s enough. Be off with you and don’t show your face up here again before you’re asked.”

That was the first time that Bjartur was ever driven out of his own house, and had the circumstances been otherwise he would most certainly have had something to say in protest against such an enormity and would have tried to drive into Gudny’s head the fact that he owed her not a cent; but as it was, nothing seemed more likely than that he had been provided with a tail to trail between his legs as in utter ignominy he took the same path as the dog and crept down the stairs. But for the life of him he did not know what to turn his hand to down there in the dark; a completely exhausted man who had never felt less independent in his heart than that night; who felt that he was almost superfluous in the world, felt even that the living were in reality superfluous compared with the dead. He pulled out a truss of hay and, spreading it on the floor, lay down like a dog. In spite of everything one had at least got home.

The crying of a child woke him next morning.

Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl

Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl [DV]

from Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl's essay "Mind the Sound" in Booby Be Quiet:

Now in those years God was not the forgiving fellow we’ve come to admire in later years, and he did not at all enjoy having to receive the all-too early travellers (perhaps he wanted time to work on his poetry). And poetry was not seen to be a mere talent, but a veritable gift from God. So God smote Þorbjörn with a curse: He bereaved him of the “gift of poetry”. But Þorbjörn, being of stubborn stock, wouldn’t take no-poetry for an answer, and kept at it, poesying like a mad-man, quite literally: no matter how he toiled away at his quatrains and tercets, they all turned out nonsensical, full of words that weren’t words, sentences that alluded meaning, leaning on nothing but the verse-framework:

Loppu hroppu lyppu ver

lastra klastra styður,

Hoppu goppu hippu ver.

hann datt þarna niður.

Some of the words in the first three lines can be seen as having “meaning”, while some are “meaningless” — the context is complete nonsense, beautiful nonsense, soundbouts in rounds galore — he is less literati than alliterati, or even illiterati — and yet it sounds like something a fisherman-blacksmith would write, it sounds like a fisherman-blacksmith’s vocabulary, nevermindyou that the words don’t mean anything — they SOUND.

The final line was all Þorbjörn had left of more traditional poetry, word-by-word: he fell there down. From the moment his curse became reality, more often than not, only Þorbjörn’s last lines would be readable. As his poetic career continued, Þorbjörn got to be known as Æri-Tobbi, Tobbi being a nickname for Þorbjörn and æri meaning crazy or insane — and so he’s known today.

Little did God know, on the day he smote his curse on Þorbjörn, that he’d be giving birth to Iceland’s first avant-garde poet — a sound poet, no less, whose control of zaum is first-class, putting him in a category with such 20th century greats as F. T. Marinetti and Hugo Ball. . . .

While Æri-Tobbi was far from making any common-sense with his poetry, while he had totally lost his grip on words, sentences and their meanings, the verse-form remains, fully equipped with rhyme and the old Nordic rules of alliteration: props & mainstaffs — the anchors of poetry that even some modern Icelandic readers would openly claim was an unconditional requirement for any poem (worthy of the name). For a quatrain the most common form these rules take (there are variations) goes something like this: A pair of alliterations in the first and third line (props), and one at the beginning of the second and fourth line (mainstaffs). It’s to be noted that all words in Icelandic have the stress on the first syllable, so that’s where the alliteration goes (moreorless) without exception:

Ambarar vambarar skrumburum sker

skrambra þumburinn dýri.

Vigra gigra vambra hver

vagaði hann suður í mýri.

The rules of props & mainstaffs are so intrinsic to the Icelanders’ idea of poetry that when foreign verse-forms, like the sonnet, are imported they get a permanent injection of props and mainstaffs: A sonnet in Icelandic without props & mainstaffs is a rare exception — to the point where it would be considered no mere fault, but an outright mistake . . .

One of the aspects of Æri-Tobbi’s sound-poetry is that it intersects its zaum with perfectly dictionariable words, and I’m told other words can be traced somewhere (go, etymology, go!) — but in any basic non-researching reading (let alone incanting) of his poetry you’re not gonna be sure what is a word and what is zaum. It’s not intentionally written as nonsense, at least that is not how the myth goes — it’s an attempt at writing poetry by a poet bereaved of his gift. This, I interject, seems to imply that God is firmly on one side of the content vs. form debate — as he did not choose to bereave Æri-Tobbi of the gift of form, but only his meaning-content (again, in the dictionary sense of meaning (no, not ‘meaning’ as the word’s described in the dictionary, but the way a dictionary conveys meaning)).

And so, once in a while, a sunbeam gets through, a single word or even sentence:

Imbrum bimbrum ambrum bambrum apin dæla

skaufra raufra skapin skæla

skrattinn má þeim dönsku hæla.

The tercet's closing line means something like: The devil can praise the Danish. What of the rest of it? ‘Dæla’ is pump, ‘skæla’ is whine — but without the help of a dictionary the rest of it eludes me, and the endings (conjugations?) are unusual, in the sense that they are repetitive, which in Indo-European languages is more an exception than a rule — especially a 4X repetition, as in “Imbrum bimbrum ambrum bambrum”.

Portions of other words can be “translated”. Thus ‘imbrum’ might refer to ‘imbra’, the fast that begins every quarter of the Catholic church year; the only word starting with ‘bimb’ I can find is ‘bimbult’, nauseous; ‘ambrum’ might refer to ‘ambra’ which is (amongst other things) the wailing of a child. ‘Bambrum’ could be from ‘bambra’, to drink fast or swig. ‘Apin’ migth be a form of ‘api’, or monkey, or ‘opin’, that is to say: open. ‘Skaufra’ might be ‘skauf’ — the foreskin of a horse’s penis. “Raufra’ might be ‘rauf’, an opening. ‘Skapin’ might be ‘skapaður’ or ‘sköp’ — created or female reproductive system (more commonly: her genitalia) or even destiny.

Most of these words that I’ve linked to the word-forms in the poem through etymological guesswork are very uncommon.

An attempt at a translation (sans form, plus more guesswork) might look like this:

During the catholic fast,

we felt nauseous

from the wailing of children

and swigging from the open pump.

The foreskin of a horse's penis

made the cunt's opening whine.

The Devil can praise the Danish.

Now, we might have different opinions on whether this makes any more sense than the original, but at least these are sentences — not even the most arid critic would disagree with that. But those looking for more finality of meaning, might want to distance themselves even further from Æri-Tobbi’s sound-poem, interpreting the interpretation — The poem discusses sins of the flesh and juxtaposes animal(istic) intercourse, crying infants and barbaric drinking habits with the strict medieval Catholic church (abandoned in Iceland, for Lutheranism, in 1550). The final line could be read as an indictment of the Danish colonial-lords of Iceland, either saying that they’re on the devil’s side (literally) or more colloquially saying something along the lines of “who cares about the Danish”. To be noted: When the protestant reformation occurred all the property of the Catholic church was appropriated by the Danish king, and he replaced the pope as head of the church, becoming more influential and eventually subjecting Icelanders to a commerce-monopoly where all imports had to be from (or through) Denmark.

We would not dare to propose such an interpretation, would not bother (the devil can praise these interpretations!) for we are only interested in sounds. And then again, while phonemes sound more than they mean, the sounds tend to inadvertently mean while sounding.

Eileen Myles

Eileen Myles [Star Black]

Eileen Myles's essay "A Speech about Allen" from The Importance of Being Iceland:

Allen was more of a star than a homosexual. His great triumph was that you forgot he was gay. One of the ways we think about a human who is a star is that a variety of things, equally important, in the case of Allen say his poetry, his Buddhism, his homosexuality, his mother, his view of government, his capacity to eat at Christine's, his taking pictures, his capacity to read the newspaper at a table full of young poets who wanted him to pay attention to them, his lips, his voice, all constellate to yield one thing only which was Allen Ginsberg, again and again, and so when you try to see him as gay, you only see him as Allen. One thing I can say about being queer in America today is that for instance if you are already famous you can say you are gay and quickly that can become all that people see. On the other hand you could be famous and everybody knows you are gay and you never say it, and people watch you in the public sector and it's like the silent partner, your homosexuality and everyone watches you and wonders when you will stand up for them, why won't she come out, but they also admire you for being famous and forgive you for wanting to stay there, all glossy and bright and understand that you don't want to lose your seat on that wonderful promontory of fame for being queer. Allen was nearly thrown out of Russia for being queer, and I think part of his pleasure in being famous was adding that one thing in all the time, so that if they forgot Allen Ginsberg was queer, which was easy because he was so many things, then he would remind them that he liked to suck young boys' cocks and the honor that was bestowed on him, the acceptance, would be nearly taken away, and the nearly is really important, I don't know the story up close, I just remember the incident and the boat of State shaking, light and full of drama, shaking really hard like something was going to happen. Allen provoked that by saying who he was, and then it was just true and the boat arighted itself. Allen knew to stay with it. He "put his queer shoulder to the wheel."

I think about being gay in America right now and how for instance for a moment our president stood up for us, briefly, wanting to make it okay for gays in the military, and everyone knows the military is loaded with queers, is it only gay people who know that any same-sex organization is intrinsically more gay than straight, girls' schools, camps, Scouts, gym, and all those conventional places where the culture celebrates wholesomeness and youth, gay people just laugh and remember sneaking around and lusting and fearing exposure and craving it in some way, the fear of exposure — and even the fact that things are often the absolute reverse of what they seem in these wholesome places, that's exactly what's hot. Almost being caught is hot. So keep that in mind, the exciting fear of exposure, playing it close, and think of the famous American poet Allen Ginsberg who lived by exposure, who loved to sing about losing his cherry to HP in Provincetown, who stood naked with Peter, and later went even further, becoming a member of NAMBLA, the most reviled gay organization, even gay people hate NAMBLA, whose members assert their right to love young boys, the hope of America, and again it's those same wholesome places that are being invoked, openly, not as the playing fields of goodness and character but as gay shrines of desire.

Nowadays NAMBLA watches videotapes of junior high school basketball games, and public service announcements about Scouts and boys' clubs and street kids, good looking ones like him and him and him and NAMBLA uncomfortably points out that our whole culture is pedophilic in the way it celebrates youth, we can barely look at youth without eroticizing it, and then NAMBLA takes one step forward and says I want to eat you, and for this even gay culture wants to throw them out.

So the way things wound up in the military is that the ship of state started rocking again, and, see, the problem is, our president isn't gay. He couldn't stay out there. He had to back down. The solution in the military was that you can do anything you want, you just can't talk about it, and no one can ask you either, and the responsibility for homosexuality is put back on the queer in a very strange way, as if the compulsion to tell were the irresistible part of being gay, as if coming out was the thing that has to stop, and no one really minds women fucking women and men fucking men, and if we would just do it quietly like heterosexuals do, then everything would be okay. And then you turn on the teevee and there's a cute romance, and then you change the channel and there's a show about a young girl coming of age and liking a boy, and then you watch another show about Seinfeld having a naked woman cleaning his apartment, and it's really funny and of course you're bombarded with images of heterosexuality all day long, the man in the deli flirts with me, he just assumes I'm straight, and all the women in the clothes catalogue are eventually in a canoe with a man, if you're successful eventually you have to find a mate, it's just part of being human, to not stand alone, to put one next to the other one, and everybody applauds. But what if we stopped that, if we suggested for a moment that, yes, it was okay to silently mate and breed, and come of age and think about the opposite sex, but no school dances please and no proms, and no weddings, and no cute blind date plots on teevee, no rock n roll, no movies about love, and no Valentines Day, and no in-laws, and no tax breaks, no celebrations of what you do, no songs, and no schools for your kids because we don't know how that happened, why should we pay for it, and no health insurance for more than one person in your house because then we'll have to think about what you do, and the fact that we are essentially paying for you living together and doing it all the time, is really disturbing, as if we should take care of that, your "love" as you call it, your lifestyle, two lousy bodies lying in bed in a house for years and the offspring of your shame, kids three and four of them, hundreds and thousands of them across America, forcing everyone to think repeatedly about you copulating in your beds at night for years, the loud bed creaking, a culture built around the repetition of that love, and Allen Ginsberg insisted that he was your baby. He stood there singing, beautiful and goofy with his little suitcase, at the door of the ship of state, for forty years, and he said that he was home.

Allen Ginsberg [Poetry Foundation]