This article is based on this dutch article of Martijn Benders
A Fiery Plea
I usually give half of the space in my collections to other poets. This invariably attracts criticism from “review centrists” that it could all have been more concise. Yes, indeed, I could have just included myself in the collection, Einstein, but I believe it is one of the poet’s duties to prevent poetry from withering away. The same characters would have praised you to the heavens if you had released it as two separate collections. They are insane, in short, and I refuse to conform to that. Go ride your bike with your poetry collection script. And this poem by Csoori didn’t even exist, because I combined two poems, something entirely taboo for the true review centrist.
In the English translation, I had to change the beautiful “verbodsboom” to “barred bough”:
I actually don’t know any other poet who consistently gives so much space to others. It’s unusual; in a poetry collection, you usually only reserve space for yourself. Sure, these are my adaptations of others’ works. But the voice of that poet resonates through it, carrying something of him into the future, which might make people curious about his work.
But I am more than fed up with that scripted commentary. The review centrist has only one template: “What does this dwarf think of the book?” He believes that is the essence of literary criticism. But it is not—it’s quite the opposite of what literary criticism should be, which is not centered around what a layman thought of a book. Due to the worldwide decline in human IQ, these problems have worsened over the years to the point where real literary criticism is practically extinct.
I don’t need an excited reporter documenting the effect of my collection on this idiot.
Literary criticism is about interpretation. It is the poem that needs to be interpreted, oh fruit pie, not you as a reader. How beautiful or ugly you found the poem matters not at all in literary criticism. Interpretation, that is the keyword, interpretation also towards the rest of the poetic corpus.
How beautiful this is? That’s sheep bleating. What you call “beauty” in your hypocrisy is nothing more than a dusty reflection of your own narrow-minded state of mind, a judgment as meaningless as the thud of an old cushion. The true art, the real poetry, it does not seek your blessing or your cheap thrill; it is a fire that burns beyond your senses, a light that shines into the abyss of misunderstanding.
But you, with your simplistic babble, dare to approach this flame, with the idiotic conviction that your approval or disapproval carries any weight?
Oh, if it were up to you, all poets would write in calm, neat handwriting, never a line overstepping the bounds of decency. In short: you, as a self-appointed arbiter of the literary realm, are nothing more than a disruptor.
For what do you understand of poetry, you who reduces words to soulless forms, as if a poem is merely a mold in which you wish to press it? My poems, yes, the verses in which I capture the wildness of existence, the melancholy of a godless summer, where the dog stands panting in a world of drought and decay—those poems are not decoration, not “beauty” as you define it. They are echoes of a reality that you refuse to see. And if you have the nerve to criticize me for giving space to others, for letting the voice of another poet resonate in my collections, then you only display your own blindness. What do you know about the necessity to keep poetry alive, to give not only yourself but also others a place in the history of words?
In “Te lief voor mystiek”, language and culture, in their full, living meaning, play like a bee in its hive, like Vita that simultaneously means life and war, like death in all its forms. Four words for death, not to categorize, but to capture the multiple nuances of the end. That is poetry—a space where words can breathe, where meanings shift and are reborn.
And if you, with your limited perspective, think that a single review can capture the depth of these thoughts, if you truly believe that your opinion on what “could have been better” or “more concise” has any value, then you have understood nothing about poetry.
For I, in my collections, give space not only to myself but to the poems of the past, to the voices of those who are no longer here, as in “Túlélt halálaimmal”, where I carry the survived deaths, and the echo of old poets resonates within me, like the spring breeze awakening the half-frozen hazel trees.
No, I will not bow to your reviews, to your dry, emotionless opinions that do nothing but try to extinguish the fire of poetry. Poetry is not a product for the market of approval, not a little collection that you can reduce with red pencil strokes to what you deem “adequate.” Poetry is a storm, a force that demands nothing from you except that you listen—and that you disappear if you refuse to understand it.
And please, take that collection of swiebertjeserotiek by some clerk to the fires of hell with you.