alphabet

Inger Christensen, Susannah Nied

• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781852243104
• eBook ISBN: 9781780370064
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Inger Christensen (1935-2009) was both a virtuoso and a paradox. Her fiction, drama, essays and children's books won her wide acclaim in Denmark and other European countries, but it is her poetry – spanning a forty-year period – that best reveals her versatility and depth. Her poetry reflects a complex philosophical background, yet her most complex poetic works have enjoyed wide public popularity. Many of her poems have a visionary quality, yet she is a paradoxically down-to-earth visionary, focusing on the simple stuff of everyday life and in it discovering the metaphysical as if by chance.In alphabet, Christensen creates a framework of psalm-like forms that unfold like expanding universes, crystallising into words both the beauty and the potential for destruction that permeate our world and our times.'The ecological crisis forms the starting point for a part ecstatic homage to the world and nature, which in spite of everything is still found: partly in the active sense that it exists, partly in the passive sense that it is discovered and understood – by the poet and by us.' – Erik Skyum-Nielsen'Inger Christensen's use of systems in no way inhibits the evolution of her poetry. On the contrary, it is as if the poetry comes about by virtue of the systems; as if it emerges in the interplay and friction with a random, but fixed order. In alphabet, Inger Christensen has created a system by combining the alphabet with Fibonacci's numeric sequence, in which each number is equal to the sum of the two preceding numbers: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 etc. alphabet is about the relationship between people and nature and, like it, is itself a form of creation. With the word exist as the pivot, the poems move – from the first wondering confirmation apricot trees exist – out into the world to life and death, the planet and calamity.' – Christian Egesholm

1

apricot trees exist, apricot trees exist

2

bracken exists; and blackberries, blackberries;

bromine exists; and hydrogen, hydrogen

3

cicadas exist; chicory, chromium,

citrus trees; cicadas exist;

cicadas, cedars, cypresses, the cerebellum

4

doves exist, dreamers, and dolls;

killers exist, and doves, and doves;

haze, dioxin, and days; days

exist, days and death; and poems

exist; poems, days, death

5

early fall exists; aftertaste, afterthought;

seclusion and angels exist;

widows and elk exist; every

detail exists; memory, memory’s light;

afterglow exists; oaks, elms,

junipers, sameness, loneliness exist;

eider ducks, spiders, and vinegar

exist, and the future, the future

6

fisherbird herons exist, with their grey-blue arching

backs, with their black-feathered crests and their

bright-feathered tails they exist; in colonies

they exist, in the so-called Old World;

fish, too, exist, and ospreys, ptarmigans,

falcons, sweetgrass, and the fleeces of sheep;

fig trees and the products of fission exist;

errors exist, instrumental, systemic,

random; remote control exists, and birds;

and fruit trees exist, fruit there in the orchard where

apricot trees exist, apricot trees exist

in countries whose warmth will call forth the exact

colour of apricots in the flesh

7

given limits exist, streets, oblivion

and grass and gourds and goats and gorse,

eagerness exists, given limits

branches exist, wind lifting them exists,

and the lone drawing made by the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Description
• Title Page
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Translator’s Note
• 1 [a] apricot trees
• 2 [b] bracken
• 3 [c] cicadas
• 4 [d] doves
• 5 [e] early fall
• 6 [f ] fisherbird herons
• 7 [g] given limits
• 8 [h] whisperings
• 9 [i] ice ages
• 10 [j] June nights
• 11 [k] love
• 12 [l] life
• 13 [m] metal
• 14 [n] nights
• About the Author
• Books by Inger Christensen
• Copyright