Barry, thanks for the questions. A few random thoughts and musings on why I
take Haavikko's death to heart, and why I'm hopelessly far from having any
critical perspective on his work.

I mentioned Creeley and Ashbery because (for me) they're giants, and
Haavikko belongs in their company.

But (contrary to whatever's on the net) he never actually won the Nobel,
although I'm sure he was considered for it in his lifetime. Ironically, the
awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize today to Martti Ahtisaari surely has him
rolling in his grave (if he's in it yet), since Haavikko despised him.

He did win something called the Neustadt International Prize for Literature,
although I have to admit that I'd never heard of it before reading
Haavikko's obit in Helsingin Sanomat.

For my money the best English-language introduction to Haavikko's work is
still Anselm Hollo's "Translator's Note," which opens the stellar 1968
Grossman edition of the /Selected Poems/. It's missing from the later
Carcanet volume.

Perhaps Pierre knows of something more extensive and will alert us to it
today (hi Pierre! So glad to see you check in). Ron Silliman linked to an
excellent piece by Rachel Blau DuPlessis on Haavikko's /One and Twenty/,
also superbly translated by Hollo, and I love her musings on the mysterious
Finnish Sampo. But /One and Twenty/ is not where I'd start my reading of
Haavikko if I had the pleasure of starting again. I'd try to track down the
Grossman /Selected/ instead.

I never met Haavikko. But he was my mother-in-law's student at Kallion
Yhteiskoulu, the high school in a working class district of Helsinki where
she taught mathematics. Weirdly enough, though, my husband didn't know
Haavikko's work till I introduced him to it in the seventies, after
stumbling on the Grossman volume at Pellucidar, a late lamented Berkeley
bookstore. Only then did he ask to meet the poet, and his mother made the
connection on one of his trips home.

My father-in-law, the philosopher Oiva Ketonen, had his own run-in with
Haavikko. Oiva held a position at the National Theatre and in that capacity
invited Haavikko to direct the venerable institution, but Haavikko declined,
saying that he was a businessman and not an artist. This annoyed Oiva no
end, but that was Haavikko (as I understand him) in his later years -- never
a camp follower, always a contrarian.

So, Barry, you can see that I'm not a good person to introduce you to the
poetry of Paavo Haavikko. The grief feels personal because, through his
work, I came to know something fundamental and arresting about Finns, and
that in turn bonded me to my husband and to our marriage. Haavikko's poems
have formed part of the connective tissue between us and bits of them are
woven, almost daily, into conversation.  

So I don't think I have any critical distance -- yet, anyway. I'm just sad.

Rachel

Barry wrote:

> I can remember reading with enjoyment Anselm Hollo's 
> translation of Paavo Haavikko's 
> Selected Poems (1968), but at this point can't really sort 
> out his precise contribution to 
> world literature and/or formal innovations from which I can 
> extrapolate. I note that he 
> won the Nobel Prize and that subsequent selected poems in 
> English have been published 
> by Penguin and Carcanet, but why exactly do you invoke 
> Creeley and Ashbery?  Could you 
> cite the best critical essay on his work and perhaps a good interview?
> 
> Barry Alpert
> 
> 
> On Wed, 8 Oct 2008 09:45:56 -0600, Douglas Barbour 
> <[log in to unmask]> 
> wrote:
> 
> >Which means I have read at least a poem or two, Rachel.
> >
> >Yes, many of us remain 'provincial,' no matter how hard we 
> might try  
> >to escape that fate; I did not 'know' his work in any thoughtful way.
> >
> >Will go re-read in Poems for the Millennium.
> >
> >Doug
> >On 8-Oct-08, at 7:20 AM, Rachel Loden wrote:
> >
> >> Interesting that the only response is here, on this least 
> provincial  
> >> of
> >> lists.
> >>
> >> And he's in /Poems for the Millennium/, for crying out 
> loud. (Pierre  
> >> Joris,
> >> are you out there?)
> >>
> >> It's as if Creeley or Ashbery died and nobody said 
> anything. But of  
> >> course
> >> my own ignorance is vast.
> >>
> >> I've put up another poem ("A Flower Song") and an early 
> picture of  
> >> him,
> >> taken around the time the poem was written.
> >>
> >> http://wordstrumpet.blogspot.com/
> >>
> >>
> >>> lepää rauhassa---Rests in peace
> >>> P
> >>>
> >>> lepää rauhassa
> >>>
> >>> KS
> >>>
> >>> 2008/10/7 Rachel Loden <[log in to unmask]>
> >>>
> >>>> Life being short, poverty and wealth
> >>>>     are final verdicts, in that
> >>>> poverty and life are of equal duration
> >>>>     and wealth and cold indifference
> >>>> are perennial and hereditary, like diseases.
> >>>>
> >>>>   (from /May, Eternal/, 1988, tr. by Anselm Hollo)
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> And, briefly:
> >>>> The old part (1754-1762) is known as
> >>>> The Winter Palace.
> >>>> Accordingly everything,
> >>>> Floor, ceiling, walls
> >>>> Is covered with these exalted beings:
> >>>> Venus, Jupiter, many ladies
> >>>> Of a full-bodied vintage.
> >>>> You can still see how many a man
> >>>> Lost head and hat
> >>>> By the Berezhina River,
> >>>> You can see that Borodino
> >>>> Was a victory;
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Of such
> >>>> I'm talking, here,
> >>>> Under the roof
> >>>> Thatched by my hair.
> >>>>
> >>>>   (from /The Winter Palace/, 1959, tr. by Anselm Hollo)
> >>>>
> >>>> http://wordstrumpet.blogspot.com/
>