Reykjavík Grapevine - 05.11.2010, Síða 26

26
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 17 — 2010 You can watch Hallgrímur Helgason (whom many of you may
know as 'the author of 101 Reykjavík') perform this poem on
YouTube, Check it out!
poetry | Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl
Oh, alright, I’ll admit it: I don’t
understand most poetry. It
baffles me. I read it, shaking
my head and scowling. I don’t
even understand my own poetry. Objective-
ly speaking, most of it’s just nonsense—like
how many ‘P’s or ‘S’s can I fit into a sen-
tence? How about if I jumble up the sen-
tences of a politician’s speech? What if I put
all the letters in this poem in alphabetical
order? Does that make more sense?
Every time I start unravelling the allu-
sions and metaphors of the poetry I like,
picking apart it’s rhythmical devices and
unsounding its assonance, I draw blanks,
paint myself into a corner and rush off of
cliffs probably not meant for rushing off
of. I get lost in poetry’s circular aphorisms,
its noncommital politics and trivial idio-
syncratic observations—I get thrown by its
semantics and semiotics, surprised by its
rhyme and its imagery and derailed by its
linebreaks and crazy indentations. It makes
even less sense than before I started trying
to fit it into my narrow view of what makes
sense.
Put another way, it’s not just that I don’t
understand poetry; it’s that poetry doesn’t
make sense. And to take it a notch further,
the little poetry I do understand, I tend to
dislike—I find it banal, mundane, lacking fer-
vour and strength and I’d like to live my life
not being bothered by it. It feels like a waste
of time and reading it I get a sensation more
akin to having overdosed on blog comments
than approaching the rapture of poetic hi-
larity/severity/generosity. I feel tired, unin-
spired and unmoved. If I feel that I can read-
ily “understand” the poem in question—if I
get a clear sense of its moral, social, political
or emotional message—I brush it aside and
move on. Yet I can find logical reasons for
liking the poetry that I don’t like—I can see
its witty metaphors, its righteous politics
and metric rhythms and go: This is good.
But it’s not.
I don’t feel it.
The poetry can be as correct or incor-
rect as anything else, it can be as funny or
right-on-target as anything else—but it re-
mains exactly that: anything else. It does not
remove itself from the constraints of every-
day written or spoken language, does not
leave or jolt the realm of message-giving,
does not venture beyond the art form of, say,
the text message or the Facebook status—
both of which can contain poetry, but don’t
have to. Unlike, for instance, poems—which
are utterly dependent on poetry.
Not surprisingly, then, I prefer poetry
that I don’t understand. It fascinates me,
enlightens and illuminates me—vivifies my
otherwise dormant, stagnacious soul/mind/
heart/body/spirit/breath. And when I say
that I like poetry I don’t understand I don’t
necessarily mean dadaist odes or jumbles of
Zaum—it can seem like perfectly normal text
at a first glance. But it’ll contain something
that’s a little off. Something jilted or tilted or
tainted. A shade of imbalance.
What this boils down to is a dimension
of understanding or feeling (or whatever)
which I can only recognise as religious—a
belief or faith which prompts the reader (or
writer) to jump the gap to join the poem on
the other side. Prompts unearned and un-
solicited participation. To shit or get off the
pot, so to speak. I don’t believe in God but I
cannot disavow an illogical belief in poetry
or language, because I cannot find a logical
reason for liking the poetry I like or writing
the poetry I write.
But, in my defence, as one benevolent
critic of my poetry put it: “The work may be
nonsense, but so is The Wasteland.”
So Is The Wasteland
poetry | Poem
Suit & Tie
A Poem in English About Post-Crash Iceland
By Hallgrímur Helgason
Suit and tie
Suit and tie
We’re deadly afraid of the clever guy
Wearing suit and tie
They used to roam the streets of Reykjavík
And thought they were what made the city tick
From bank to lunch with Nikkei, Dow Jones and
FTSE
Dressed to kill in Armani, Boss and Gucci
Cheerful, laughing, full of self-esteem
The players of our national team
But now you hardly see them anymore
The crisis took them through a different door
Their bank got crunched by Euro, Dollar and Yen
So now they’re trying Tai Chi, Yoga and Zen
Still they’re good in playing the blaming game
The players of our national shame
Iceland: The home of young and retired bosses
And regular people busy counting their losses
The high-flying heroes of good times past
Have come to the ground and had their blast
Hiding inside his fancy house
The bull now meets his inner mouse
And both are dressed in Suit and tie
Suit and tie
Nothing scares like suit and tie
We’re left alone in the Arctic sea
For they left the loan for you and me
To pay
But they
Do have enough to last an eon
Silently kept in the Caribbean
So true, so true
So mad, so bad
But we don’t want back the life we had
Full of lies and numbers high
Enough to keep a country high
On hope of becoming the new Dubai
Where all the women wear Suit and tie
Suit and tie
Suit and tie we kiss goodbye
Communism lasted long
Nations led by Mr. Wrong
Western brokers, young and brave
Went disco dancing on its grave
But victory got to their head
Big ambitions were overfed
The color of blue contained some red
The Wall Street Wall came down one night
And we were all raped by Mr. Right
Capitalism fell on its nose
Died from an overdue overdose
Of arrogance and loneliness
And left the world in a state of mess
We were all fooled by Suit and tie
Suit and tie
Who tricked us, told us: To sell and buy
While speeding across their private skies
Engines fuelled by loans and lies
The boys of Bush and global greed
Left us with a local need
For truth and nothing but the truth
To put inside a confession booth
The Brothers Lehman and all their sons
The neo-cons were just plain cons
In suit and tie
Suit and tie
Trained to loot and taught to lie
Yet we try
To struggle on
A nation betrayed by an evil don
A nation so small you can easily whip
All of it into a cruise line ship
The former captain and his crew
Are still on board but out of view
Sipping on Scotch inside their cabins
And telling jokes like desperate has-beens
Or faking calls
In bathroom stalls
While nervously looking for their balls
We carry on, on a vessel unwell
Steering away from the icebergs of hell
The national body still infected
By the virus we long neglected
Called Suit and tie
Suit and tie
Hoping it won’t make us die
At the airport a father of three
Spends his last in the Duty Free
“We’re going to Norway, to get a life
Wife will study, I’ll be her wife
It’s sad to leave your fatherland
A bit like parting with your hand
But they took the house, they took the car
Does Stavanger have a strip-tease bar?”
And the politician on the TV screen
Speaks of ways to cure the spleen
But his words no longer do apply
For he’s still wearing Suit and tie
Suit and tie
Suit and tie we kiss goodbye
And when you roam the streets of Reykjavík
You spot the signs that made your city sick
Empty houses, vacant office spaces
And way too many fancy meeting places
On the map, nearby the valley parks
The financial district is now shown in quotation
marks
And on the streets and freeways, parking lots
There still are lots and lots
Of black and shiny Range Rover jeeps
Luxurious creeps
Once the symbols of all our national vices
Now they are the coffins of the crisis
Driven by people who died a market-death
But were allowed to prolong their final breath
In suit and tie
Suit and tie
They’re all still wearing their suit and tie
In Germany they have the Nazi outfits
To remind them of the thing that rhymes with...
outfitz
In Iceland we have Suit and tie
Suit and tie
Suit and tie
This poem was first performed at the Kapittel 09 Festival
in Stavanger, Norway, September 16th 2009.

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