Quote of the Day: Kai Nieminen

                

Kai Nieminen is a Finnish poet, and like all human beings who happen to be poets, he is also other things. You can Wiki him to find out what those other things are.

I was enjoying Serious Poems (Rain Taxi Brainstorm Series #5) in the wee small hours tonight (translated by the ever-likeable Anselm Hollo).

It's one of those poetry books that manages to function as literary criticism and cultural criticism at the same time it works as poetry (think much of Charles Bernstein's writing, or the work of Bob Perelman or Rachel Blau DuPlessis).

Anyway, there are many lines I could choose, but this was the best for my mental money:

"I AM A PROFOUND PERSON, BUT I'LL SPARE YOU THAT, I HAVE MORE IMPORTANT THINGS TO TELL YOU."--Kai Nieminen

And here are a few runners-up, from the same little book, all by Kai:

"As soon as I've set the world to rights, I'll write some pretty, apolitical poems again. If I have the time."

&

"these words have to be said out of the way, new ones are coming"

&

"I assume that my living friends are able to hear what I tell them, since even the dead ones who live on the bookshelf are conducting such lively conversations with me. And among themselves."

Okay...that one seems to be speaking to a poem I wrote some time ago...what did I say in it? I can't remember, which is why we write these things down...let me cut and paste...but Kai hit my wavelength there...I like this guy! Oh, my computer says I wrote this...this is from a longish, unpublished poem in fragments...Blogger will surely fuck up the long lines when I cut and paste...

"Until you arrive at a perverse urge to telephone, which can be complicated
by a desire to telephone his body without signifying to his consciousness.

This perhaps comes closest to the bitchiness in art.

A telephone call in art can travel across many, many centuries. Further,
it may be placed between two dead artists, posthumously. In these cases,
the call is made for the benefit of living artists (or so they imagine) who eavesdrop
with a sense of absolute credulity, impatience.

The anticipatory, smooth reductionism of figural sculptures from the Cyclades island (800 B.C.)

A nude sunning itself on rocks, abandoning gender.

The telephone call is not placed as the observer wills."

Okay, back to Kai...

"What is caught on videotape does not really exist."

&

"You would like to become a misanthrope? Just acquire a large circle of acquaintances."

&

"Some stare at the ocean, others swim in it or sail on it. Few have the courage to drown."

& I'll end with...

"The sky rose up, straight, vertical, boundless. Through it, the birch tree next to the well could be seen."