Review: 'one day I will write a poem'

Black Fountain Press has released its second book– 'one day I will write a poem' – a translation of poetry by renowned Luxembourgish writer Lambert Schlechter

In some ways, Lambert Schlechter has all the qualities of the archetypal poet: a matured feline sprightliness, a certain wildness of hair, a suit with a confusing number of layers, a long thin scarf, eyeglasses. He seems winnowed by the winds of literature, the type whose boredoms would still interest most people. Coming on stage at the release of the first-ever English translation of his poetry (one day I will write a poem, Black Fountain Press, 2018), he first had to locate somewhere to set down his glass of red wine. Then his performance began.

But in its implication of flowery languishment and muse worship, 'poetical' doesn't describe him at all. He isn't, according to himself, an agoniser over wording, a slow writer or a grandiose one. Rather, he gets an idea for a poem and transfers it to the page immediately. When asked how long the process usually takes he, eyes widening like a cat's, shouted: "Four minutes!" He explained that the poems simply "fall" down from their starting point, swiftly, each one nine lines exactly, never more, never less.

On stage, Schlechter, a retired teacher and veteran writer of nearly four decades, performed theatrical readings from the new book with spirit and acid and pathos, making his audience laugh and titter and ruminate. To recapture the spirit, you must read the following with all the drama you can muster, pausing generously after each line, mimicking a breeze with its ludic updrafts and slowdowns:

this morning I will fall down the stairs
I will break my neck

this noon my brain will explode
leaving me paralysed forever

this evening my heart will clog up
smashing me onto the tiled floor

tonight my beloved will come into my arms
and I will breathe in all the perfumes of her skin

today, once more, I will write in praise of life
(p. 126)

The poems themselves are ebullient and dismal, frank and humorous. They often possess a twist or a swerve: never a gotcha! suckerpunch but rather a mastered and quiet ending that contains more specificity than you had expected. It's as if you were eyeing a stalk at very close range, following its green filaments and nubs and knots up from the ground, a leaf here and a stem there, morphing shades of green, and then right at the end come the yellows of a sunflower, which, you now realise, had been there all along.

In this way, the poems are more like emblems of human life than they are fortresses of meaning with secret passageways and invisible ink. The pleasure is not in investigating their haunted interiors but in travelling stark and fertile imagery to arrive at a truth, perhaps a gently surprising one in the context but one you often already knew. Final lines like 'I am at the bottom of my coffin' have power in reinforcing truths rather than upsetting them, and thus the poems tend to trace back to elemental themes like love or sex, death or life. The sequences of clear images also take strength in their speed: the lines, which largely eschew punctuation and adjectives, rarely stop to ponder (just like the poet himself, if he is to be believed, during his writing process).

I almost don't exist, she almost doesn't exist
we are two specks of dust

but from time to time these specks
become sparks in the night

two derisory stars find each other somewhere
barefoot on the edge of the milky way

in the bottomless abyss of space
two sparks illuminate each other

there is no light for me other than that of your eyes
(p. 31)

Schlechter is, furthermore, thoroughly unshy in his wording, always in pursuit of plain feeling. He seems to be among those poets who honour their own virile sensoria above everything, to the point where they reduce every object of description, including female body parts and women in general, to feelings and pieces fitting of their own interpretation.

Though Schlechter is both the genitor of the poems and, in the case of the book launch, the agent of their performance, what hinges his world together with that of English literature is translator Anne-Marie Reuter. Reuter co-founded Black Fountain Press last year and wrote its first book, On the Edge (2017). Here she has again shown highly developed literary sinews in her work.

Sadly, it is beyond this reviewer's capacities to discuss how the poems sound in their original French, or what has been lost or gained in translation. Notably, however, Schlechter himself advised on and approved the translations, his English being fluent (Reuter has mentioned that he is deeply knowledgeable about American poetry in particular). When asked if they ever argued over wording, Reuter said no – but he would sometimes cut in with "rougher" word choices. Credit must ultimately go to the translator for spearheading the obvious literary quality of the final draft.

Some of the poems, additionally, are newly composed in English. Schlechter has previously written in German as well, but when asked if he ever writes in Luxembourgish, his native tongue, he replied: "I can't." Reuter, who shares his first language, opts to use English in her own work. In fact, only in recent decades has it become fashionable (some might say possible) to write in Luxembourgish at all. For those of us who are native to large countries of monoglots, such language decisions seem to betray the allegiance of culture and literature, but the Grand Duchy's literary heritage seems rather to be defined by its being refracted into several tongues.

As further evidence of the English hue of this refraction, Black Fountain Press celebrated its first birthday not only by launching Schlechter's book but also by announcing the winners of the Young Voices English writing competition. Top prizes went to Noëlle Manoni for her poem Farewell and Marie Wivenes for her short story Shock, and three special commendations were given, respectively, to Phoebe Archer, Gaspar Alves Gonçalo, and Sofia Foti.

Black Fountain Press is planning to release an anthology later this year of English-language writers active in Luxembourg. For more information about BFP and its next events, visit its webpage.