Have you heard that a fallout between two philosophers can make national, frontpage news in France? That writing quality poetry could earn you a place of political power in Ancient China? That Vaclav Havel’s absurdist plays helped land him the role of president when Yugoslavia emerged from the Soviet Union’s shadow?
Well, here’s one more bit of literature-was-once-famous info: in the 1980s, the “Ann Jäderlund Debates” rocked Sweden after the publication of Jäderlund’s second collection of poetry, Which once had been meadow. Mainstream newspapers began to challenge both her and her work, taking offense at the difficulty of her lines. This, it turns out, was worth getting angry about, worth the writing of news stories, penning op-eds, and yelling at the dinner table. Was she being intentionally obscure in her poems? Is such an act unethical, making her work—and perhaps the author herself—bad? (And of course, the further question—would these issues be so controversial if Jäderlund were a man?) With Lonespeech, brilliantly translated by Johannes Göransson and wisely published by Nightboat Books, English-speaking readers finally get a chance to see what all the fuss is about.
The book emerges from the decades-long relationship between Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann. More specifically, Jäderlund borrows from years of letters between the French poet Celan and the Austrian prose-writer Bachmann. It’s not so much, though, the story of two lovers divided by a broken Twentieth Century, star-crossed due to wars, geography, and ill-fate; nor is it the story of a friendship. No, not in Jäderlund’s poems. Instead, what we find here, even as Jäderlund mines the letters for language and ideas, is a work that feels like the meta-biography of a relationship, a meditation on how we can know our world, others, or ourselves; meanwhile, it uses constant synesthesia to question what it means to hear, to see, to feel, and what even is the basis of language. Ultimately—and I mean this in a very good way—the book is less about the relationship between two authors and more of a sort of epistemological, phenomenological journey into the art of knowing.
The poems in this book are untitled and incredibly brief, and it is easy to read them as short-yet-elusive letters and, at the same time, as part of one long epic. They share similar themes and motifs, and all are quite spare, using simple, allusive language. Here is one in full to give you a sense of what the book holds:
Not here
I hear it
no one hears it
the sound for
darkness
can be so
many words
open the window
are you made
of words
No one hears the sound for darkness, the speaker laments. Is it the same speaker who later states “I cannot / see / the words / you / start out / from”? Words here mean everything. They have weight, they bring forth, they are what makes up both speaker and addressee. When talking about what it means to know of our very existence, that makes sense. For generations Zen thinkers have told us that our ways of knowing are rooted in and obscured by language, that our sense of self is, for better or for worse, linguistically bound.
In fact, at many times, the poems feel as if they were written by ancient Chinese hermits: “The river goes up / it lies down / just a little bit / the sun rises / I have no one / to talk to.” But then we link a poem like this with the one that immediately follows, and though both sounds Zen-like, they are still based in Jäderlund’s meditations on language and its relationship to the lived-in world: “Sounds about sounds meld / can we listen / suffer / hear a love / a love cools / it is the river.” These are love poems, sure, but mostly in the way that a poet (and poetry readers) loves words and language, seeing it as something vital for our world, something that goes beyond the poem to our very knowing of the world.
To recognize our language-bound knowing, to try to know ourselves and others as if for the first time, this, it seems, is more what Jäderlund is about here. “None have names / none / everyone knows it / but hear / only names / names and names…” begins one poem. It is opaque, yet it points to both a typical unknowing and a hope for knowledge. Jäderlund’s is a sort of deconstructive poetry, poems that challenge the bounds of language even as they recognize the necessity of words. She seems to be saying we can only know ourselves and others through language, but it is language that precludes us from really knowing.
While the book’s difficulty at first made me think of if John Ashberry imitated Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow,” I soon found myself thinking instead about Ben Marcus’ The Flame Alphabet, whose ideas and language were so dense I felt like I could physically chew on both as I read. I had a similar sense reading Lonespeech. It’s the sort of book that, if you pay attention, gives you instructions for reading, even with its strangeness. In one poem, near the beginning, the speaker says “Speak say / hear / listen / some / someone / has time.” And that’s just it. In revisiting the love and friendship between two great writers, Ann Jäderlund has written a powerful love letter to the art of poetry—we just have to listen. And have the time.
Lonespeech, by Ann Jäderlund. Translated by Johannes Göransson. Brooklyn, New York: Nightboat Books, May 2024. 88 pages. $17.95, paper.
Matt Martinson teaches honors courses at Central Washington University, and occasionally reviews books for Heavy Feather. Recent fiction and nonfiction appear in Lake Effect, 1 Hand Clapping, and Coffin Bell; his piece, “Trout and Trout Remain,” received a Notable mention in Best American Essays 2024.
Check out HFR’s book catalog, publicity list, submission manager, and buy merch from our Spring store. Follow us on Instagram and YouTube. Disclosure: HFR is an affiliate of Bookshop.org and we will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. Sales from Bookshop.org help support independent bookstores and small presses.
Heavy Feather Review 