A friend has died. A friend is dead and needs to be buried. From now on, it is “forward” that applies, but for the poem-I it stops. He stops going out of the apartment, and doesn’t answer when the phone rings. The up-stop is also linguistic. The poems have a resistance in them, a kind of stuttering that tells that certain things should remain unsaid because the impossibility cannot be overcome with words. Keep it real and hold back, says Thomas Stene-Johansen with his book “Med stor og stum k”. This is what separates his collection of poems about death and grief from most others’: the audacity to refrain from loading or swarming away. It is what it is and that’s just the way it is, he says rather. Similar to acting The fact that the language falters from time to time makes it seem genuine. The poems do not seem planned and flicked to perfection, but as something that occurs here and now. A slow unpacking of a content where the words go back and forth and a bit in circles, but equally replace and give birth to each other as they do when you think out loud. This must have been written without interruption, one might think while reading. The book has such a nice spontaneity – an orality that belongs to the dialogues and which could work well as a play. Stene-Johansen has a drive, a forward drive, which makes him easy to read and easy to like. The word forward is, wittily enough, something that surprises me on several occasions. Time moves forward as much today as yesterday, but today you are dead, so it doesn’t feel that way. Time is a feeling and most of all a nuisance. Being human is tiring because you have to decide how many shadows you can tolerate, and how big a spoon you should eat with. Such things the two friends talked about. The closeness between them was rooted in facing life as two. The life that is so scary that it itches when you start thinking about it. Fine-tuned scenes from early adolescence appear like field strawberries on a straw. The poem-self talks about growing up, and occasionally he sparkles with a wisdom that can come from no other place than lived life: The best The best thing about this book is the tone. Stene-Johansen delves into a theme that inevitably raises questions about memory and impermanence, but all the while without doubting its seriousness. It’s not heartfelt thoughts, it’s grief in all its simplicity and in all its inconceivableness. Here there are no howls of pain, no one throwing up or tearing up. Don’t forget that grief can be ugly, ugly. Instead, there is a dullness, almost despondency, which pleasantly punctures the heart without slipping into complete irony. The very best thing about this book of poems? That it does not constantly refer to nature as if to gain poetic power. Death is not like an autumn leaf falling from a branch! Death is like nothing. The poems operate in this quivering vacuum, from within. Missing surprises Stene-Johansen avoids most linguistic clichés. Nevertheless, he does not concern himself with more than the very basics – the last meeting, the unsaid, the unthinkable of a human being simply ceasing, and the unthinkable of having to follow the brutal movement of time towards greater and greater distance when all you want is to : The extract is taken from a part where I dream about the friend. For those who have mourned, it is a well-known fact that they did not want to wake up to the world. Yes, the story is believable, the characters are alive and the development is easy to follow. There is little noise – and that is perhaps what bothers me. The book is more predictable. It lacks something that breaks, surprises or twists. Anti-openness Something unspoken murmurs throughout the book, a greater intimacy that was never allowed to become explicit. When I finally imagine how things could have been, it is also in suggestive terms: lying under a duvet together, holding hands, growing old together. The bubble does not burst. Unsatisfying it may be, but therefore also very special. In our time’s ideology of openness, where the solution to everything is to “talk about it”, art becomes the place where one can (or must?) be ambivalent, unclear, contradictory. Tension arises when not everything is laid bare and laid out for the day. Life is inscrutable and the art is to hold back. Stene-Johansen has realized that, and then he has already come a long way. news reviews Photo: Forlaget Oktober Title: “Med stor og stum k” Author: Thomas Stene-Johansen Genre: Poetry Publisher: Forlaget Oktober Number of pages: 110 Date: September 2022 More poetry books reviewed: Listen to Hans Olav Brenner’s podcast about poems:
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“With big and silent k” by Thomas Stene-Johansen – news Culture and entertainment
