KRISTIAN GUTTENSEN THE DEDICATED ICELANDIC POET AND ACADEMICIAN

BIOGRAPHY OF KRISTIAN GUTTESEN

Kristian Guttesen holds a PhD in Character Education from the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues of the University of Birmingham (UK). He has published poems, stories, and translations, in the field of literature, as well as academic papers on character education, poetry teaching, creative writing, and poetic inquiry. He is the author of 12 poetry books in Icelandic, having published his first book in 1995, and more recently, his Selected Poems in 2015.

SHORT STORY AND POEMS OF KRISTIAN GUTTESEN

A Short-story About Rimbaud’s Poem About the Sleeper in the Valley

When we collide, the ocean washes galaxies across these globular clusters. A beautiful mess, a message of hope, these are the best things in life. Who said that they saw the best minds of a generation created? Our minds. When we construe such an organ, and organs, our thoughts like God concern the truth. * When everything was finished, the ruins and stone walls formed a new landscape. You were no longer loved by me. A deathly silence hung over all. The mind cast a cold shadow. * A dike. A sudden silence. The memory of a promise which never will be recollected.

I am waiting for an explosion at any time and expect the ground that I am walking, my skull, to cave in. Beheaded sins disappear into the gnawing abyss, and belching froth, a ticking humanity, greets these fortuitous confessions. Behind me, another world rises out of the cloud of dust from the one that I built, but I can’t bear look back.

I see us on the shore, an elderly couple by a calm sea. The picture isn’t reminiscent of Rimbaud’s poem about the sleeper in the valley, with the two shot wounds, that appear by surprise to the reader, towards the end of the poem, but hand-in-hand we wade up to the ankles.

In the distant future, our descendants will remark how we were unaware of the picture being taken, and it is unclear who rests on whom. As if a bomb were dropped, the picture goes up in smoke, furniture is shattered, a hurricane hits the land. In another picture, the woman sits in a crowded masquerade. Her wine glass is held aloft, as the subject stares with empty eyes into the dusk. No way of knowing where the lover was at, that night.

When I remember that you are gone, or that some other apocalypse has occurred, it doesn’t matter if the feeling is well-founded or not; my heart bangs in my chest, my
body falls from a cliff, I experience an uncontrolled irregular heart rhythm, vertigo, nausea– and everything spins. No way of knowing whether tomorrow will come… And,it’s only now that I realise, things have been like this for a while– I hadn’t noticed, but see it clearly from the last panic attacks, and I recall an incident when< everything turned black and I freaked out. No way of knowing if the sun will ever rise again.

In the coffee house I order an espresso, an americano, and a latté to go with that. I have poetry in my repertoire, and blasphemous desires run on a loop in my brain. The year 2012, but that is not important as I scribble these lines. My lizard brain whispers to me my soul is black, love is deceit and eternity just a pigeonhole for old foibles, patterns, traumas. This is how I hear my name being whispered, a rustle in the wind. Quickly, I turn, but there’s nothing there. I go back twenty-five years – my dad is in my room, saying: If you agree to live with me, I will buy you a 10 gear bike. This is not long after we have moved to Iceland. I lack the language to say what I feel of his offer and, at the same time, I have lost my Danish. In Icelandic, ask my mother later what the Danish term for bribery would be in Icelandic. ‘If you’re thinking about the bike, you needn’t worry,’ she replies – and I am left with many feelings I can’t express.

I finish the coffee, put on my coat, and shout goodbye! With poetry in my repertoire and an unfathomable future, constantly whispering: You are here, we are your thoughts, the blood from the shower head will wash your sins away…

If there is one moment in time, I could have chosen to live my youth, it would be the time of Nick Drake. My love for you would glide towards the world, like a cloud on a red sky. I would be a boy with a guitar and a burning heart. You, a flower girl with justice in your repertoire, wearing a headband. Our love would be a meta-love.

I am cooking the dinner which you always added food leaves into. But I do not have any leaves. The supernatural is natural. I lie numb, can neither move legs, nor limbs. The imaginary is real, the real is imaginary. Selfishness has always been my bad side. It is only when lie down, locked inside my body, that I escape from my own self. We have decided to get divorced– or, more accurately, you have decided. We are following a recipe. We have been together for some years, but have known each other much longer. I am afraid. Can only move my eyes, and am numb. I try to call for help, but no sound comes from my mouth. We are attracted to women. The night is our drape. Twin souls do not need light.

WAR

I

You think something becomes true
by saying it three times
that in poems your words become more poetic
by addressing someone in the second tense
that you manage to rewrite history, to change
memories, by showing someone
the letters as if they empower you and give weight
to the words –
you sink into a swamp, find the next refuge
and another and another –
all the words you spit out
pulling loops from the depths of the soul and mobbing
floors on the side, for black money of course because
such are the works of darkness –
you think god does not exist
except for when you are suffering
that no one is their brother’s keeper
and that the children will shelter you
that the pagan gods and various monsters w0ill defend
you and the black dog (…by the way, does
he still play poker?)

II

You dream of breaking the glass ceiling
you say you wear a glass helmet
that your words are as beautiful as your silence –
love is war
all relationships are warfare
one party always defeats the other
sometimes an explosion will occur
sometimes a peace agreement is reached
but peace only belongs to a time of peace
under the terms of war –
all the words we know but do not use
are chemical weapons
in war one must sacrifice oneself for the cause
justifiable self-sacrifice is a mindset, not the end –
now, many years later
I walk the empty streets of the city
which is still unrecognizable after the bombing
every other house is in ruins
while the ones in between have been rebuilt and stretch
themselves majestically towards the sky (…there are birds
on the pond which are reflected in the surface of the water)