This is another Lanterne book — I happened upon this while looking for the previous book (The Birds) and thought “yay”.
Jan Erik Vold is Norway’s most famous poet, and this is a fantastic book. His poems are usually funny, absurd, tending towards aphorisms, but can take sudden turns towards being affecting and moving.
Or political:
(“Today’s Czech”.) Still relevant today!
As is his most famous poem, which I didn’t know was in this book:
“Culture Week”. I remember seeing him on TV declaiming this poem when I was a child, and I was rolling around, laughing.
But is this bit on the top of the next page part of it?
Which brings me to the only thing I didn’t quite enjoy about this book — the way it’s set. Poems often start on one page and then continue onto the next page for a stanza or two, and sometimes they don’t, which just makes you stumble a bit as a reader.
It feels like they had to cram the poems into a specific number of pages or something… But on the other hand, it does make them seem less “precious”, which might be the point.
Kykelipi (1969) by Jan Erik Vold (4.03 on Goodreads)