August Kleinzahler: Twee Gedigte
Friday, June 11th, 2010
August Kleinzahler
August Kleinzahler is (soos Bruce Springsteen!) in 1949 in New Jersey gebore. Sedert die verskyning van sy eerste digbundel in 1977 het hy al ‘n stuk of 10 bundels gepubliseer. In 2008 wen hy die gesogte National Book Critics Circle Award vir sy bundel Sleeping It Off in Rapid City.
Kleinzahler skryf gedigte met ‘n dikwels sardoniese inslag. Weens hulle effektiewe gebruik Amerikaanse spraakvorme en -ritmes, en hulle fokus op alledaagse situasies, vertoon sy verse by tye ook ‘n sekere verwantskap aan die werk van William Carlos Williams.
Kleinzahler het by geleentheid al skerp kritiek gelewer op die self-referensialiteit of oordrewe tekstualiteit van sekere postmodernistiese tendense in die (Amerikaanse) digkuns. In ‘n artikel wat in 1992 in die tydskrif Harper’s verkyn het, “Poetry’s Decay”, maak hy die volgende stelling: “The language and movement of poetry have become disconnected from the body, away from physical expression — breath, mouth, muscle, and pulse — to lexical meaning. Because of this break, the poetic line has lost its structural integrity”. Hier is twee van sy gedigte:
Meat - August Kleinzahler
How much meat moves
Into the city each night
The decks of its bridges tremble
In the liquefaction of sodium light
And the moon a chemical orange
Semitrailers strain their axles
Shivering as they take the long curve
Over warehouses and lofts
The wilderness of streets below
The mesh of it
With Joe on the front stoop smoking
And Louise on the phone with her mother
Out of the haze of industrial meadows
They arrive, numberless
Hauling tons of dead lamb
Bone and flesh and offal
Miles to the ports and channels
Of the city’s shimmering membrane
A giant breathing cell
Exhaling its waste
From the stacks by the river
And feeding through the night
The strange hours travelers keep - August Kleinzahler
The markets never rest
Always they are somewhere in agitation
Pork bellies, titanium, winter wheat
Electromagnetic ether peppered with photons
Treasure spewing from Unisys A-15 J mainframes
Across the firmament
Soundlessly among the thunderheads and passenger jets
As they make their nightlong journeys
Across the oceans and steppes
Nebulae, incandescent frog spawn of information
Trembling in the claw of Scorpio
Not an instant, then shooting away
Like an enormous cloud of starlings
Garbage scows move slowly down the estuary
The lights of the airport pulse in morning darkness
Food trucks, propane, tortured hearts
The reticent epistemologist parks
Gets out, checks the curb, reparks
Thunder of jets
Peristalsis of great capitals
How pretty in her tartan scarf
Her ruminative frown
Ambiguity and Reason
Locked in a slow, ferocious tango
Of if not, why not
