Book review: Kjell Espmarks late style is eager and enthusiastic

the Word ”identity” appears four times in the Kjell Espmarks new collection of poems. It is mentioned in the first poem, in two that will further, and finally in the very last. There are quite a number of times, to be a book that can accommodate twenty poems.

Second, it can of course be with the present to do. I did the Work the cultural editor Johannes Klenell a perusal of the web-based platform Quarter, and found an overheated interest in the concept: ”the politics of identity. The politics of identity. The politics of identity. The main enemy is the regard to the former. The repeated in text after text. Unclear what it has done. But the naive, it has been.” (15/3)

Now, I do not believe that ”Tonight's freedom” should be read as a post in the political debate, but it is clear that the issue of identity hit a nerve in Espmark. And probably have done it, the entire oeuvre through. I think of his rolldiktning, which is quite unusual in our latitudes but significantly more prevalent in the southern european and Latin american poetry. The reluctance to focus on their own subject, and collect force and motion from historical or fictional life stories is a pronounced tendency on the part of Espmark.

I lie in Espmark so obvious come to the writing from the reading. His poems often bear the traces of other literature and it is as if he wants to put läsupplevelsens transcendence in their own practice. Writing in someone else's perspective and continue to see with the eyes. When Espmark writing from other horizons than their own, he is often lively, eager, and enthusiastic. He is also a dedicated educator, and accompany welcome your comments, preface and how to read the document.

Espmarks scepticism of identitetsfrågan is also evident in his reluctant memoir with the telling title ”Memories lie”. There he writes: ”I would like to stick to the eleventh commandment: ’You shall not take yourself so damned seriously.’ ”

Okay. So Espmark want to disturb subjektspositionen, but why is it so important? What is it about, really? I think the answer is in the diktsamlingens title: ”Evening freedom”. And today's, and the night, and this morning, would you be able to add.

”With a soft consistency and frequent thoughtfulness, his poetry upheld this freedom for over half a century.” Writes Aris Fioretos in the preface to a samlingsvolym with Espmarks poems that came 2010. It is fine to " highlights the softness, Espmark is no agitator or agitator, but the question of freedom is absolutely central. For the people in the first place, but also for the art and poetry.

in reading, it also becomes clear how Espmark is working to pull itself out of the roles that now seem to be given him. The starting point is the so-called ”late style”, whose characteristic, as Espmark writes, ”should be current for an 89-year-old poet”. May it be so. Himself, he chooses a middle ground by, as he says: ”examination of the various late konstnärsroller as the discussion brought to the fore, to live in and summarize the late creation stages that were attributed to Beethoven, Cavafy m.fl.”

Now maybe it was not and could to free take Beethoven's position and at the same time, blinking to Tranströmer: ”finally, weighing each half note a pound”, but if you have spent a life in literature's service to man. The poems are talking about, and to, and sometimes with the voice of other writers and artists. In the poem ”Helene Schjerfbeck in Saltsjöbaden” writes Espmark:

”this is The last självporträttet,

in the caput mortuum, not a wrinkle,

no, not a trace of identity.

It is a picture of the final man –

just an open mouth, which solidified

around a cry that lacks the end of the year.”

by Kjell Espmarks most widely read literary works. The book was published in 1977 and has since been published in new editions. Is there anywhere to find the libertarian site of man and his different identities, so it is of Espmark in the poetic image. Sometimes you can experience a kind of narrative distance in his poems, so drop it when the image gets preference. This opens a room where many souls get place: the poem, the author's but also the reader's.

There is a soaring freedom that for a little while dissolves the limitations. As it says in the collection's last diktrad: ”a euphoria that has understood that efterlivet may precede death”.