She Who Writes is Another
an estate after death
now the book is mine
I don’t remember its contents
I only remember the name Ketil
I want to read it again for the first time
The Old Man and His Sons
I didn’t get anything out of it at school
the classes were long
longer than clock hours usually are
in nature down by the sea
I take Heðin Brú with me in the car
I know where I’m going
I drive along Oyggjarvegur
the drive across the island is the most enchanting I know
little to no traffic after the tunnel was constructed
the asphalt snakes through the raw landscape
as if it were part of the original mountain
I drive through Mjørkadalur
onward to Kollafjørður
and Hósvík
past my great grandmother’s old house
the trees in the garden wave me on
as if saying no one lives here anymore go!
I stop at the old whaling station at Áir
I have never seen a great whale
in Faroese waters
dolphins and pilot whales yes
a curious seal now and then yes
but never a great whale
I write a whale-thought
the darkness of the world is great
we live in the ocean-deep darkness
indifferent to the world on land
it is a kind of violence to kill a whale
and to read Heðin Brú
it just is
why?
I write
to kill
to read
to carve up
to get sand in your eye
to get seawater in your mouth
I can’t figure out
how the old machines have been used
butchery
boiler house
centrifuge
blubber cooker
press
I picture the steaming hot great whale
hoisted up by a winch
onto the butcher block
and liquidation gears
gripping into the teeth of other gears
all of it is rusted now
an iron world oxidized with the past
tanks
metal cylinders
and kettles that once steamed here
I read there’s a pod of pilot whales in Sørvågsfjorden
an excellent sentence yes
that I don’t hate
I am going to be in Heðin Brú’s world now
going to lie out in Sørvågsfjorden
along with lines about pilot whales
float in the fjord
soften in the wetness
soaked to the bone
the taste of salty saliva in my mouth
delicate strands of seaweed
woven into my hair
along with lines about the pilot whales
I don’t need to read any more than this one single line
and I am SLAUGHTERED
——
no I don’t hate everything I read
Hera Lindsay Bird writes
that it is bad behavior to hate
yet we have to do it anyway
to hate is a bad behavior
but I have to feel it anyway
thanks Bird
but no I don’t hate everything I read
not everything
to hate poetry
thus the poet is a tragic figure
the poem is always a record of failure
Ben Lerner in The Hatred of Poetry
attempts to convey truths in text
but you can’t do it without consequences!
failed attempts
provoke hatred
all attempts
are failed attempts
all attempts
provoke hatred
people don’t want hear poetry
they want to go home and not read poetry
writes Bird
indeed
to continue anyway
like the river
as it flows
through a terrain of text
to take a book of poetry off the bookshelf
to turn to a random page
and read two or three lines
and then
throw the text down with full force
the book hits the floor
slides under the bookcase
disgust
when the sentences crawl up the body
into eyes and ears
attach themselves firmly
like mighty limpets
leaving behind sticky trails of mucus
the text a cliff
a rock
a cave
but I don’t hate everything I read
I call it the Duck/Rabbit Proof
throw the duck a stare
and the rabbit hops down his hole
writes Billy Collins
I don’t hate that poem
I also don’t hate the poem Morning
and the line about the lawn steaming like a horse
early in the morning
and the lawn steaming like a horse
in the early morning
——
Marguerite Duras writes
that she who writes is another
maybe it’s nonsense
but
even the writer can die
is sometimes in danger
of losing her life
the writer dies rock ‘n’ roll death
in a hotel bathroom
with a pen in her veins
an overdose of black ink
if we don’t take care of her
or her freshness is killed during a pilot whale drive
and the slaughter only took 3 minutes
she who writes is scribbled
scratched down
carries herself with elegance and beautiful hairstyle
sets the table in the kitchen
plates
when guests arrive
forks
cleans up nicely
crystal
smells of soap
decorated
with past and words
scrapes
on the flat white stillness
sharp
smells like iron
absorbs
carves up
dries
flayed at the butchery
guts blood
freshly slaughtered
harpoon
thick whale skin
hooked on
boiled in an open tank
centuries old
swimming in time
entrails blown out all over the station
stinking
chopping crushing
bone meal
and you
want to stop her and her seawater
when the waves come crashing in
but if you write to her in a text
stop writing you writer
she’ll just text you back
YOU CAN’T STOP ME
because she doesn’t fear you
or the day
the writer
ready for disaster
already in the womb
within Liv estranged interlacing that she is
writes Claudia Rankine
wakes up early
before the broadcasts
runs down stairs
into mornings that smell of late summer wind
cites Orissa by Ola Julén
I began in despair
and my despair endures
in despair yes
and careless as a child
everything is simply better when you are a child
purer
lighter
freer
the child’s mind is a daisy wreath
hanging under a full moon
in the evenings
and the sky shines a limping cosmic light on hopscotch
the raindrops
the rainbow
the grass
EVERYTHING is better in childhood
we remember what we were forbidden
writes Stephen Dunn
I was nine years old
while rummaging through my
mother’s letters
writes Sophie Calle
the night: my shadow growing
writes Ocean Vuong
now I cut across the yard like a child
writes Fredrik Nyberg
I want to be your child
writes Ola Julén
the little hand that would have snuck into mine
writes Åsa Maria Kraft
I sneak back into childhood with my blue wheelbarrow
writes Tórodudur Poulsen
and the sky shines a limping cosmic light on hopscotch
writes she who writes
money in your pocket
to buy chewing gum
candy and beginnings
somersault
buttercups
scrape your knee
forget to eat supper
running
outfield
all movements soft as a pillow at night
jumbo band-aids
and then
when are you grown up
the field is a torture mattress
a cloth of grass-green nails
that turns the pointed end upwards
drilling into the flesh of your back
when you try to take a nap
there you lie grown up
and read A Report on the Banality of Evil
for example
sharp as a knife
she’ll SLICE you open
Hannah Arendt
you sit with the paperback book in your lap
298 pages in Beit HaMishpat
and you get a new name
ADOLF EICHMANN
you don’t get to run in fields of buttercups anymore!
shouts Arendt
the gravity stiff with blue-cold like a still lake
you wade out
the cold ground crunches under your wet toes
sand stone crustaceans
a starfish
you pick the nails on your nervous fingers
dip them in the sea
and the nails float on the surface
like life jackets without a body
while the sun shines
sea salt stings your skin
and then your waist
breasts
head under water
Note
The Old Man and His Sons (1940, Feðgar á ferð) is a canonical Faroese novel by Heðin Brú.
PHENOMENOLOGY 1.1 / TEXT TO ASCONA / TEXT TO MONTE VERITÀ
PHENOMENOLOGY 1.9 / TEXT TO TEEN YEARS AND ELASTIC
PHENOMENOLOGY 1.11 / TEXT TO NAME
Brad Harmon is a writer, translator, and scholar of Nordic and German literature, film, and philosophy. His forthcoming translations include Katarina Frostenson’s The Space of Time (Threadsuns Press, October 2024) and Birgitta Trotzig’s A Landscape (Sublunary Editions, November 2024). He currently lives in Stockholm. bradharmon.me