Smugglers is the latest collection from Miriam Lindberg Israel Poetry for Peace Prize-winner Ales Debeljak. Written in Slovenian and translated by poet/translator Bryan Henry, Smugglers is published by BOA Editions, a house which continuously presents a terrific range of poets to the national and world audience.
Ordinarily I do not read introductions or back matter before diving into a poetry book. Generally a skim-through of several poems is what works to see if something “speaks” to me from the pages. Smugglers is such a book, for sure. But I did, for some unknown reason, read the introduction this time, and it proved to empower me as Reader in terms of approaching the book and how I might enjoy it. Mr. Henry writes, “A poem translated from Slovenian should not appear entirely natural in English; it should not erase the traces of the original. There should be a certain amount of strangeness—not exoticized foreignness, but a reminder that the poem originated elsewhere, in another place, another language, another culture.” This proved to be both meaningful and helpful for me.
Each poem in Smugglers in sixteen lines long and is comprised of four quatrains. The opening poem, Home, stylistically sets the tone for the rest of the collection. It is one of the few that mostly reads straight through without detours and deviations between subject matters. Repetition is introduced here in the beginning with “opportunities abound” which affords Debeljak those moments of either large or small detour, poem depending. And then the notion of nodding: “A peony nods to me knowingly” and later, “I nod knowingly.” But the guts of it are all sustenance. Take the third quatrain (as it appears on page):
I only have to step through the back gate, lured by the shallows of days,
and I surrender, as wet as a stray dog, water running off me,
like that time when I forgot to pull the yeast from the scent of the loaf
and we walked all afternoon, dizzy, from one room to another,
I just find this sort of first “meeting” Debeljak to be promising and remarkable.
Turkish Restaurant is a terrific example of the poet’s ability to set scene. His opening:
Under a drowsy canopy, between the stout castle
and a busy road, sits the bartender, large in the light.
Legs crossed on the floor with a widespread lap
he invites: come to me, come to me, there’s enough
walnuts and honey. I go and mix among people.
On pages 43 and 45 the reader comes across “On the Deck” and “Arrest Warrant,” respectively. It was at this point it occurred to me that some of these unique, talented poems ought to be read aloud. I wrote this in the margins on both pages. There’s a magnificent sort of cadence and rhythm to these that jolted me from the other form of care I was applying to reading those prior, wherein I sought those subject shifts in order to attempt tying them together, or hell, happily not tying them together. For example, in “On the Deck” it begins with “We have come to see how the seed has taken root in foreign soil, fine Arabian sand in the crotch” only to see the second quatrain steer elsewhere with this excellent line: “Between a man and a woman every meeting is the first,” (beside which I wrote “ah!”). And as for “Arrest Warrant,” I just find it to be a near-perfect poem, with lines like these: “they were sailing, frayed at the edges, just like a hand that becomes a wrist without clear boundaries” and “It’s a crime to cut a kidney from a sleeping man, there and here, under the flags that flutter indifferently.”
“A Fool or a Baker” is a favorite. I’m happy that I’m unable to exactly write why or how it is a favorite beyond, perhaps, the fact that it simply feels so good to experience both quietly between the temples and breathlessly into a room. Perhaps that it’s softly raining here in New Orleans as I type and senses are heightened, appeal elevated? No matter. I love poems that give me what this poem seems to give.
Debeljak’s repetition is not ubiquitous nor is it uncommon, and I think it seems to work everywhere used in Smugglers. In fact, I could see the poem “Under the Basket” anthologized and/or used in a college textbook. All quatrains begin with “Do not, for God’s sake,” with the first line reading like so:
Do not, for God’s sake, push a battered head into boiling water,
where past and future are as unreal as a game
between volcanoes.
Lastly, I’d like to draw from one of the other poems which reads straight through as mentioned earlier. “Schoolboy’s Blues” is one of the last poems of the collection. I find it in its entirety to be quite lovely.
I still don’t understand them, but wish to, so much
that it hurts sweetly in the twilight, in the tepid air,
that I would learn a hundred languages and orbit everywhere
like a guest at my brother’s wedding and I would hover, yes, like mist
on the flowers in a greenhouse,
Ales Debeljak’s Smugglers is the type of poetry book that, once the reader establishes a relationship with it, is difficult to lend out or give away. I suggest this because not every book of poems is immediately understood, not every book is instantly appreciated. But Smugglers has a quiet, dazzling nature to it that I find palpable. And so a reluctance to share it is an act to protect its artistry, as if to say, “You may read it if only you promise to attempt feeling what I feel.” A selfish notion, sure, but this is one of those books that came along (for me) when needed. I recommend Smugglers without question. I just can’t quite let you see my copy.
