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Today糖心传媒檚 post is by poetry committee member Kevin Prufer.

The Book of Things by Ale拧 艩teger, translated by Brian Henry

Language: Slovenian
Country: Slovenia
Publisher: BOA Editions
Pages: 92

Why This Book Should Win: The poems in Ale拧 艩迟别驳别谤糖心传媒檚 The Book of Things focus with nearly comic intensity on an array of everyday objects糖心传媒攁n egg, a coat, a toothpick, a stomach. Here, a potato recollects the soil it came from. Or a hand dryer speaks a windy language we can糖心传媒檛 quite understand. Or a doormat forgives us all. But 艩迟别驳别谤糖心传媒檚 poems go far beyond mere comic description, personification, or metaphor. Rather, his objects reflect our own strange complexities糖心传媒攐ur eagerness to consume, our rationalizations and kindness. Our many cruelties and our grandiosities.

Each of these fifty poems (the book includes seven sections of seven poems plus one introductory 糖心传媒減roem糖心传媒� titled 糖心传媒淎糖心传媒�) fixates with obsessive detail on a different, focusing on the turnings of its imagined mind. A loaf of bread 糖心传媒渁sks you to do him harm, for you to stab him / To shred him to pieces, consume his still warm body.糖心传媒� 糖心传媒淵es, yes,糖心传媒� 艩teger concludes, 糖心传媒渉e loves you, that is why he accepts your knife. / He knows that all his wounds crumble in your hand.糖心传媒� Or, of a pair of windshield wipers, he writes: 糖心传媒淏oth of them hide something, / That is why they move in such harmony. / Like two serfs in black rubber boots.糖心传媒�

At times playful or grimly serious, the effect of these poems slowly gathers until one has the sense not of looking at everyday objects anew, but of being looked at anew by the once inconsequential objects that surround us. And, reflected in their many, multifaceted eyes, we do no fair well.

艩迟别驳别谤糖心传媒檚 The Book of Things is harrowing and hilarious, unnerving and weirdly familiar糖心传媒攁nd, most of all, ambitious in its attempt to look anew into our all-too-human darkness. And translator, Brian Henry (himself a poet of significant talent) renders these poems beautifully into an English that is both colloquial and disconcertingly plainspoken.