An English Anthology

by Leonard Nolens, Paul Vincent (Translator)

Overview

‘I was born in Belgium, I’m Belgian. / But Belgium was never born in me.’ So writes Leonard Nolens in ‘Place and Date’, which captures a mood of political and social disillusionment amid a generation of Dutch-speaking Belgians. And throughout this selection we encounter a poet engaged with the question of national identity.

Frequently the poet moves into that risky terrain, the first person plural, in which he speaks as and for a generation of Flemings, embodying an attitude towards artistic and political commitment that he considers its defining mark. ‘We curled up dejectedly in the spare wheel of May sixtyeight,' he writes in the selection’s central sequence ‘Breach.'

Nolens’ poetry is haunted by giants of twentieth-century European lyricism, by Rilke, Valéry, Neruda, Mandelstam, and Celan, with whom he has arguably more affinity than with much poetry from the Dutch-language canon.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781784105747
Publisher:	Carcanet Press, Limited
Publication date:	11/29/2018
Edition description:	None
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Leonard Nolens (born 1947) is an Antwerp-based poet and diarist. He has published some 25 collections, for which he has received both critical and reader acclaim. His work has been awarded many literary prizes, most recently the prestigious Prize of Dutch Letters in 2012.

Table of Contents

From Two forms of Silence (1975)

From Sung to Exhaustion and Dated 11

I'm no longer a son or a seer 11

Not to be able to write another poem 12

I waited and none of you came 13

I, Poet, carillonneur 14

From Legacy

From Paul Celan 15

Today autumn comes and eats 15

Invented nothing. Nothing 16

Washed away 17

You could go nowhere 18

It's you 19

In Memoriam Matris 20

I still have to learn you 21

From Incantation (1977)

From Proteus 22

Belief 22

New Land 24

From All the Time in the World. A Form of Poetics (1979)

From Anonymous 25

Undercurrent 25

Thursday morning, 12 October 1978… 26

From Homage (1981)

Prologue 27

From Homage to the Word 28

From Someone Else Wrote Our Love Down Before 29

Iowa City 2 29

From Vertigo (1983)

From Exile 30

Traitor 30

Narcissus 31

Slave Girl 32

Week 33

Exile 35

From: Exodus. Profile of Utopia 36

L* 36

L** 37

From The Dreamed Figure (1986)

From The Enduring Departure 38

Place and Date 38

The Enduring Departure 40

From Travel Expenses 41

Verklärte Nacht 41

Fright 42

From A Natural Street 43

A Natural Street 43

From Birth Certificate (1988)

From Tributary 44

Deontology 44

Tributary 45

From Times 46

High Fever 46

Sunday 47

Paranoia 48

From Loves Declarations (1990)

From Melancholy 49

Playing the Beast 49

Minimum Wage 50

It 51

From Love's Declarations 52

Craw 52

From Honey and Ash (1994)

From Etiquette 53

Door 53

From Night Vision 54

October Sun 54

From And Vanish in Moderation (1996)

From Children 55

My Most Solid House 55

Class Reunion 56

Between Five and Seven 57

Weariness 58

From Self-Portraits and Diary Poems 59

Late 59

From Alice 60

Alice 60

From Passer-By (1999)

From Always Tomorrow was the Journey 61

The Busker 61

Easter Letter 62

Blooming 63

From Ways of Life (2001)

From Kicking Foetus 64

Tristitia 64

Clan 65

White Bread 66

Lout 67

Archaic 68

The Clock Strikes 69

Scream 70

Clean Sweep 1 71

Clean Sweep 2 72

Inspiration 73

Tourist 1 74

Tourist 2 75

Commitment 76

Crowning Glory 77

At a Grave 78

From Ex-Directory 79

Inside and Outside 79

Ex-Directory 80

From Spy Hole 81

The Bourgeois 81

The Shy One 82

The Nameless Ones 83

The Captain of the Kursk 84

The infinitive 85

The Drinker 86

From Breach (2007)

From I - Flesh in Uniform is Fully Automatic 88

From III - We Were the Silent Ones after May 1945 93

From IV - How Does My City Look When I Dream It? 101

From V - It Is a Splendid Book 106

From Desertology (2008)

From Desertology 107

Interview 1 107

Interview 2 108

From Tell the Children We're No Good (2011)

From Tell the Children We're No Good 109

From Blind Date 111

Jealous 111

From Motto 113

Bombast 113

Cliché 114

Translator's Note 117