Claes Andersson is one of those people you cannot pigeonhole. He is a poet, a member of the Finnish Parliament, a jazz pianist, former editor of an avant-garde magazine, and psychiatrist. All these facets of Andersson's life are evident in the poetry of What Became Words, wonderfully translated from the Finland-Swedish by Rika Lesser.
The avant-garde influences are most evident in Andersson's list poems, and his poems in which he refers to himself in third person, such as "Andersson is making a damned racket":
Andersson is making a damned racket
Andersson can't even stand up straight
Andersson really won't ever amount to anything
Andersson is a coward
Andersson had better start thinking things over before it's too god-
damned late
Andersson quivers like aspic
Andersson drinks too much
I most enjoyed Andersson's touching poems about his city, Helsinki, and the people around him, relatives and strangers. Here is where his background as a psychiatrist is most evident, and some of his poems even use his patients as their subject, as in "When a person goes to pieces":
When a person goes to pieces
like freezing sparrows her thoughts depart
The seeds run out of her and she's hollow
It happens so slowly, her own mother
fails to notice
You can't hear her cry any more, the tears
have frozen solid in her past
and she is no one
Much of Andersson's poetic style is quite lyrical and rhythmic. The original Finland-Swedish versions of the poems face their English counterparts, and you can see that they, too, show the importance of repetition in Andersson's work. Even in the shortest poem in the book, a mere four lines, Andersson's use of rhythm and repetition serve to pack quite a punch:
What we miss we never lose.
The one we loved we always miss.
We never lose the one we loved.
The one we loved we always love.
Andersson often seems to rely too much on the stylistic crutches of the avant-garde, when his more lyrical and emotional poems shine so much brighter and are far more powerful. I highly recommend What Became Words as a fantastic introduction to one of Finland's great and prolific poets.
Also by Andersson: Poems in Our Absense; Valve; As If Nothing Happened; The City Is Called Helsinki; The Society We Die In; It's Not Easy Being a Homeowner in These Times; Become Together; Roommates; I have Met Them: Poems 1962-74; Through the Cracks in Our Face; Songs of the Trees; Shortcomings; Wonder; My Best Days; What Became Words in Me: Poems 1962-87; That Shine Between the Bars; The Skin Where It's Thinnest; and Poems from the Bottom of the Sea.
Fiction by Andersson: Behind the Images; Spring Most Fair; and A Person Begins to Resemble His Soul.
