Helena Eriksson's Strata (Shearsman, 2014)

My student, the poet Wendy Klein loaned me this book; she and Jan Teeland translated it from Swedish, and it came out earlier this year from Shearsman Books. Here are some favourite passages from this book-length poem:


the riverbed, the flat stones comprise the place
for the final scene


                               Fiction is the junction

*

               This is no real city. They're just acting. It
is real in my memory

*

                             the way of working stays within the frames
                             the way of working defines the frames

*

meanings stitched into the embroideries. Out there on the fortress
What was expected of her

*

Cover the body

               "fluttering golden veil"


        touches every part of the body that isn't listening

*

They pass in the forest of figures, discover places once again, now without intensity. The sharpness or salinity of these discoveries, and even the radiance itself, has diminished. Nevertheless they send thin rays out over their hands. My body has begun to emit darkness.

*

after the winter illiteracy

*

I think of him where he stands with his
grammar    the whole night haunted by
suffixes

*

There was frost still lying over the ground, not even the dogs
were out     still longing for you when I
went     the membrane over everything or
the very sheen of the membrane

*

nothing that is left and nothing that
lies behind     only cupped hands and pairs of eyes

*

the darkening     remains
stinging silence no: speech
rises     remains

*

(the only relief is her gown
in her gown his and hollowed out)



You can purchase Strata directly from Shearsman's website here.