In the forward to his delightful collection, The Mountains of Kong, Dag T. Straumsvåg is quoted as saying “I like to think of the prose poem as an explorer setting sail for the open sea, lost in the legends of El Dorado or Soria Moria, the dream of a new world where everything is possible, anything can happen.”
“I'm coming to think of reading poetry as an act of rebellion against a world that demands my time and gives back terror.”
I’m a bit of a poetry skeptic, these days. I’ve been consumed with fiction, and when I am not reading fiction, I’m watching the world burn, via all the news. I'm one of those people who says "I don't really have time for poetry." How misguided of me, in retrospect. I'm coming to think of reading poetry as an act of rebellion against a world that demands my time and gives back terror. Then again, shouldn’t every poem be wrought to seduce the skeptical likes of me? To win me over, conquer my need for story and linear sense and structure, shake me away from the headlines and bad news, and delight me with thoughtful fancy, dark imaginings and distant vistas, hopscotches of logic?
Straumsvåg seduces. And charms and reels me in like a wonky handmade fish, missing fins and eyes tied to the rusty lure of some old Finn in "The Lure-Maker from Posio".
“These are turbulent times”, remarks a Neanderthal wife, an one of the opening pieces called The Quiet Times, “anything can happen.” The deft joke, and the gentle reminder that we've always been going to hell in a handbasket is the early tip to the reader that they are in good hands.
As promised by the forward, these poems are not fastidious, and the reader soon learns that within the lines and pages, anything at all can and does happen.
There is so much absurdism to love at work in the free verse poems. In Dr Alfred, a person who has nothing in their life but their disease discovers that the disease is more interesting than the carrier and soon the disease abandons the carrier altogether. Mid poem plot twists that leap and surprise, chaotically smashing through story beats is a signature of the writer's style, as much part of his approach as the 15 syllables of a haiku or it's evocation of time, place and emotion.
The brevity and rum-ness of each little world in Straumsvåg’s work reminds me of Piet Heins’ Grooks “The universe is milliards and milliards of billiards and billiards and billiards.” Grooks were wry, spicy, sweet amuse bouches that held nourishment and humour and aptness. And like Grooks, poems in The Mountains of Kong are aphoristic. They reel off like Aesop’s fables, warm, full of earthy warnings and bon mots and dark or even racy turns of phrase and hold resonant meaning.
These are poems that make me want to pick up the phone and disturb my boyfriend at work so I can read them to him aloud. Or wake him up out of a perfectly nice sleep because a line is so good. There’s so much delight in these spandrels - effervescent musings from a fertile brain. There’s a marvel in the brevity, playful glimpses of new landscapes. I struggle to adequately critique poetry being out of poem habit but I find myself devouring the short sharp pieces like potato chips, with the added sanctimony of knowing I am doing good for my soul at the same time. I’ve practically ascended to a higher plane of existence by bingeing these strange little hors d’oeuvres of thoughts and words.
The piece I want to disturb someone, everyone at work with is perhaps one of my favourites. For me it channels a gleeful David Lynch kind of world, complete itself, funny but laden with poignant detail:
RETIRED PRIVATE DETECTIVE
He could hear this sound deep inside himself, a munching sound, like
someone gnawing on a leg bone. He suspects his ex-wife, then his
neighbor. A few months later he begins to limp. Maybe the limp was
planted there. He moves to another city, changes his name. He can still
hear the munching. He grows older. He grows shorter. He suspects
everyone. People die and leave him trinkets in their wills. Other parts of
him go limp. He loses his hair. He investigates himself. Each morning he
wakes to a silvery plane buzzing out of the sun, dropping breakfast in his
mouth without spilling.
“In a hotel in Riga” echoes e.e. Cummings with his tripping of words down the phone lines. “No one answers, and the conversations are sucked back into the lines, colliding, getting mixed up with incoherent discussions, disastrous misunderstandings.”
The Mountains of Kong comes as such relief in a world fractured by notifications and terror wielding headlines. And it is kind that these pieces are so short when all of us have forgotten to pay attention to anything. Straumsvåg pays acute attention and distills a moment masterfully. Readers will feel enriched within only a few lines. I can bear more news headline darts after fortifying myself with these poems. I have been girded. I have rested. Laughed. Fallen asleep by a campfire and awoken, refreshed, ready for new horrors, but more supple. For a moment, a little less brittle.
About the Author
Dag T. Straumsvåg was born in 1964 in Kristiansund, a city on the western coast of Norway, and grew up in the nearby Tingvoll county. He has been employed as a farmhand, sawmill worker, librarian, and sound engineer for a radio station in Trondheim, where he has lived since 1984. He is the author and translator of nine books and chap of poetry, including A Bumpy Ride to the Slaughterhouse (2006), The Lure-Makerfrom Posio (2011), both from Red Dragonfly Press, Nelson (Proper Tales Press, 2017), and But in the Stillness (Apt. 9, 2024). His work has appeared in a wide variety of journals in Norway, Canada, and the United States.
About the Reviewer
Emily Weedon is a CSA award winning screenwriter and author of the dystopian debut Autokrator, with Cormorant Books. Her forthcoming novel Hemo Sapiens will be published in September 2025, with Dundurn Press. https://emilyweedon.com/
Book Details
Publisher : Assembly Press; Bilingual edition (April 1 2025)
Language : English
Paperback : 150 pages
ISBN-10 : 1998336077
ISBN-13 : 978-1998336074
This book from one of the best poets around these days should be read by everyone who loves poetry. Not only are the poems good, but the stories that are being told are unique. Each poem takes you on a journey. The way Straumsvåg describe the enviroment in his poems set you into the scene on the first sentence and then you go for a ride. I often read one of his poems, close my eyes and see a short movie of what I just read. Pure magic.