Benjamin Sonnets

by Clint Burnham

Poetry. THE BENJAMIN SONNETS is a series of poems created through a process of "homophonic" translation from German writings by Walter Benjamin. They are ridiculous, but only in the sense that things unexpected and wonderful can be ridiculous. "I once sat for about 120 minutes in a film by Mizoguchi in Japanese without subtitles; after 15 minutes every word had a meaning, the entire dialog seemed to be in a patois composed from German, Spanish, French, Greek and English components. I understood it, but its light, ironic nonsense contradicted hilariously with the solemn acts on the court of some Shogun which was the content of the images. I have never felt like this again, except under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs, until I read Clint Burnham's BENJAMIN SONNETS, except that the backdrop here was not some aristocratic Japanese scenery, but Berlin. Benjamin himself has felt like this when, under the influence of something, he saw Venice in the upper Kurfuestentstrasse. Architecture and language, once you're able to forget or not know how to speak it, always make their own sense"--Diedrich Diedrichsen.

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Clint Burnham is Professor of English at Simon Fraser University, Canada, where he also teaches theory and popular culture. His books include The Jamesonian Unconscious: The Aesthetics of Marxist Theory (1995), The Only Poetry that Matters: Reading the Kootenay School of Writing (2011), and the collections Digital Natives (2011, co-ed. with Lorna Brown) and From Text to Txting: New Media in the Classroom (2012, co-ed. with Paul Budra).

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Afterword by the Author: The Benjamin Sonnets is based on Berliner Kindheit um neunzehundert (1938), a childhood memoir by Walter Benjamin. I found a copy of German copy when visiting Berlin in 2007 (thanks to Max and Hadley in Berlin and Arni Haraldsson in London for accommodation during the genesis of the poem), and began a homophonic translation. Working from the German, I tried to find similar sounding English words; thus Haus auf ihre Stärke hätte schlißen becomes "house slice aunt Hatty starkers ear off"....

Based on the author's afterword, Clive Burnham's method of writing homophonic translations relies heavily on the unconscious, which places it more in the realm of automatic writing (this may be true of other homophonic translations, but this is the only author's statement I have read that attests to it). But what if the author's unconscious is cluttered with all of the rubbish that makes up our decaying culture? No matter how hard the author tries to re-appropriate the associative fragments of unconscious, he cannot erase the reader's associations with Andy Warhol, Susan Sontag, Donald Trump, and Shrek. Indeed, high and low clash unfavourably in The Benjamin Sonnets. Ultimately, the book is another testament to a culture in decay. But that doesn't mean it is altogether objectionable to read.

I

Vee necker mooch her
Nougat bore in
in here brews!
leg it own
"A" sue bacon
fair fart does leave in
hindsight met her knockers
sartain error runs

And deacon height
nixed Kraftwerk tick-tock
don't say Kraut rock
the mine's inside's
integer, integral, integrate


II

Dirty heart fund eye sigh
Curse icky sick Tigger, under
wound her fair wend
when fairly treatment shirt
(Shrek, "shek", shirk, shirty, sheik)
Munch near thine
Braille's brilliant
Susan Sontag's kaput

How am I to pull her?
Escobar sins right
Cons Streetheart
Meanwhile back in Berlin


III

In haltertops wear
eyein' gambler rice
rise, Bob the Builder!
your kingdom awaits
your shield's an image
to scuttle die man the
Kaiser
pan or odor-ama

fanned, a little
dab U doyen
nicked for Rolf Mauer
ankley Ankara woman no dice

- pg. 7-9