It by Inger Christensen, trans. Susanna NiedNew Directions, 2006

“Like Hesiod,” writes Anne Carson, in her introduction to this volume, “Inger Christensen wants to give an account of what is—of everything that is and how it is and what we are in the midst of it” (ix). Which seems promising, as does the structure of the poem: prologos, logos, epilogos, and within logos, three sections, “stage,” “action,” and “text,” each of those divided into eight sections, based on categories taken from a book called A Theory of Prepositions. Prologos: before reason, before the word: a becoming, fluid. Then logos: order, structure, reason, how things and people relate and connect. Lines and images resurface, dreamlike: but a poetry more of rhythm than of beauty. This book was written in 1969 and its politics and aesthetics seem very much of that time: there are John and Yoko in one line; there’s a doctor dropping acid in another. Epilogos, after reason: fear, chaos: short lines and a relentless pace and it ends how it started, but in reverse: “That’s it. It.”