falsche freunde: Prosa-Gedichte

by Uljana Wolf

Rare Book

Genres: Poetry, German Literature

85 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2009

About the author

The German poet and translator Uljana Wolf was born in East Berlin, and studied German literature, English, and Cultural Studies, in Berlin and Krakow. Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies in Germany and all over Europe.

(from http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net...)

Reviews

[Alan Davies · Rating 2 out of 5]

The chapbook False Friends has two sections. The first / untitled – perhaps to take its name from the book’s? / in which case false friends. The second entitled variations.

I – false friends

Twenty-six short lyrical lower-case paragraphs / entitled A / B / C / etc. The language carries the text forward. Foregrounding the language means work takes place largely on the surfaces of words. At the same time / regarding the paragraph-sections / each advances a sort of narrative / or / each sort of advances a narrative. But loosely / at best. If we were given to comparisons / or looking for antecedents / we could say that the prose is Joycean or Beckettian. Uljana Wolf’s first language was German / and perhaps there are influences – eg Ilse Eichinger. The language is kept bubbly and alive by devices. Most poetry is / to some extent / isn’t it? We could mention –
alliteration –

begin the beguine
curried it cunningly
not scales but fabric that falls in folds

rhyme –

never shall I betake myself out, away or off. nor will I, parting, doff.
or is my friend, and either, too – one last breath, then static and adieu.

wordplay –

a descriptive mention is followed / quick / with the letter mentioned –
dear smallest letter, i was just thinking
the last words of a section –
and should he not? – that’ll end a poem.
and –
our lips conjoined without translation, and the lone copula that lingered was that most unmistakable ampersand: skin.
– where copula brings copulation to mind / and body / where skin is happy ampersand between lovers. Intercourse is also language betwixt beings.

Wolf is noted for using more than one language to make her works / usually English and German. The present text includes some Danish stuff –

julklapp [ Danish for xmas present ]
wentletrap [ name of Danish origin for a type of sea snail and its spiral shell ]
Inger Christensen [ experimental Dutch poet / quoted ]

There are references within the work / eg one to Raymond Chandler and his character Owen Taylor. Above section D this quote –

They sent me a wire … asking me,
and dammit I didn’t know either.
– Raymond Chandler

and within the text Wolf writes who killed owen taylor and by what means? and the riddle at hand, though, remains unsolved. Came time for Howard Hawks to direct The Big Sleep / and one of the loose ends in the text was the matter of who had killed the chauffeur Owen Taylor. Thus the question asked / thus Chandler’s answer. Uljana Wolf has mentioned Celan and Kafka as influences. I will note that Celan and his work are the antithesis of literary referentiality. Kafka was damned original too.

There is a he oft-mentioned and a she less-oft / within the text. Perhaps it’s just because we know the sex of the book’s author that we think Wolf the she who is frequently addressing he. He could be anybody.

The text reads classy and sweet / quick and somewhat guileless. It would be a pleasure to hear it read aloud – children would get it. It’s fresh. It bubbles along. It’s easy to read. Never a reason to stop. No ideology / nothing like that to slow it down. Not much being said. In a way it’s genteel. A passage between friends / perhaps.

German versions – are they the originals (“originals”)? – are given at the back of the English. Here sections are not titled A / B / C / but – art / apart – bed / bald / bet-t / brief – clam / chef – etc. These titles / if that is what they are / have a symbiotic relationship with the paragraphs they introduce / reference moving in each direction.

*

II – variations

Six poems / each with the name of an author beneath. Including Russian poet Eugene Ostashevsky / NYC writer and painter Traver Pam Dick / Canadian poet Erin Moure. I have not been able to locate either Ute Schwartz or Uwe Weiss. I trust they are not lost permanently. It is implied by tradition that names beneath poems are those of their authors. But perhaps not – could these not rather be false poems attributed to false friends?

Again / in these variations / there is wordplay – poems often employ alliteration responding to the words in its title – there’s a bad pun / bad hare day – and the German word bettwetter means bed weather / amusingly / and not bed wetter. Again there’s a he / probably carried over by these authors from the false friends text. Which raises a curious question – would these hes then be the same as those in the first text / or not?

The chapbook is translated by Susan Bernofsky / credited with bringing Robert Walser back to the attention of those of us who read English / with translating books by Jenny Erpenbeck and Toko Tawada and others. Wolf teaches at Pratt / Ostashevsky at NYU / Moure at Concordia University. Have the others conceivably escaped that form of mis-translation?


[ A late addition to my understanding of the book. This / from the copyright page – Appended alternate translation copyrights belong to Pam Dick, Sharmila Cohen, Paul Legault, Erin Moure and Eugene Ostaveshky. Sharmila Cohen is a German to English translator. Paul Legault is a poet and translator. Names here don’t entirely match names in the text. Go figure. A reminder that all names are invented / perhaps? ]


/ copyright © 2021 Alan Davies

[SmarterLilac · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really, really interesting. From the author's note at the end:

'These DICHTionary poems (Dichtung is German for poetry) are based on so-called 'false friends' in German and English--words that look and/or sound the same in both languages, but differ in meaning.'

What follows is a truly complex series of poems, which dance back and forth between serious and comic, humorous and tragic. Very well translated, I would think, (although it's been years since my last high school German class) as the English version has a lot of heart in its descriptions of these meditations on love, communication and memory.

Great work overall.

[Jesica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fun read. It is quite obvious Wolf was having fun writing it. The images or word play are supposed to be fun, that's the whole meaning of the book. The images also didn't seem forced. They all flowed and seemed to come naturally. I enjoyed their flow and ebbed along with them with my rubber tube. Definitely looking forward to reading more from this writer.

[E · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beste Freunde! Als Leser spürt man solche Gedichte nur alle paar Jahre, aber wenn es passiert, es tut SO gut.

[James Grinwis · Rating 2 out of 5]

amazingly built chapbook though I think the translation went in places quite removed from outcomes.