Time of Sand and Teeth
I am proud to announce the forthcoming publicaton of my poetry chapbook Time of Sand and Teeth from Finishing Line Press. My book has been endorsed by:
Gerda Weissmann Klein, world famous Oscar-winning author of All But My Life and The Blue Rose:
"Beautiful and moving." "I am deeply touched by the caring artistry."
Gary Earl Ross, author of Shimmerville and Matter of Intent:
"A garden of sensory delights--and terrors--Time of Sand and Teeth shows us how to see with all our senses, how to appreciate the slivers of experience--joy, pain, loss, expectation--that comprise life. These poems are frank, stark, haunting, and exquisitely beautiful examinations of our interconnectedness. Bravo!"
Dan Veach, Editor of Atlanta Review:
"Gunilla Kester's gaze at the tragedies of our history is steady and unflinching, her connection with the story personal and direct. Yet there is a remarkable lack of bitterness here. She enfolds the hurts of war and persecution with a careful attention and empathy that speak of the possibility of healing for our troubled times."
My poetry collection is about the place of a poet.
I come from Europe where we have a long tradition of the poet as Out-Sider, No-Sayer. Over the years, I have had a hard time explaining why this is a good position, especially to young American students who are brought up to be Team-Players and Yeah-Sayers. But the more they read Kafka, whose three sisters were killed in concentration camps, and learn about the Holocaust, they tend to better realize the value of an individual NO, especially in a fashion-dictated mass-culture, or a fascist-dictated bureaucracy.
Both by conscious choice and by unconscious compulsion, the poet places him or herself outside of history, in order to be better prepared to witness it, to join it, and to inherit it. Therefore my poetry has an identity torn in three directions, like a syllogism in three parts - thesis, antithesis, ad synthesis - as a way to externalize the tension inherent in the poet’s place.
One part of the poet’s place is the poet as witness to, what Karl Marx and Stephen Deadalus call, “the nightmare which is history.” This, too, has been a hard concept to convey to young, optimistic American students. I grew up in the shadow of the Berlin Wall and “the Crime Without a Name” as Churchill put it, while they grow up more or less confidently with the web. But art is useless unless it struggles with and against the conflicts in which it is born. My collection includes a rather benign, still an honest, personal response to September 11, a poem about the Holocaust, about the war in Iraq. Hopefully, it fulfills what Czeslaw Milosz wanted when he states “owing to the extraordinary and lethal events that have been occurring there [in his/my part of the world] . . . we tend to view it [poetry] as a witness and participant . . . because it witnesses us.”
The second aspect of the poet’s place is the poet as member, living a day-to-day life in a family and a community. This is necessary—community and truth are two sides of one coin—but painful, nonetheless, as the community often wishes to place safety and rules above its members and, more so, its art. But art stands for the unknown; you can’t mandate what you don’t yet know.
The third part of the poet’s place is the poet as heir, struggling with ancient myths and tropes. My thought was that through the struggle between history and self, the poet forges an authentic voice, which must be added to the chorus of literary history. Because no matter how modern, how unique or individual we become, the more we read, the clearer we see that nothing is new—except the voice of the artist. It is not so much what we write as how we do it. Yet, what we write and how we do it crucially define our time and who we are. Poetry is realized only when we see how deeply we care about who we are and what we can become—our step into the unknown.
How to order Time of Sand and Teeth
To order online:
1. go to: www.finishinglinepress.com
2..scroll down to Gunilla Theander Kester (books are listed in order of author’s last names) and click on Time of Sand and Teeth
OR:
To order by check open and print:
The book costs $12 and during the pre-order period, from now until Jan 16, 2009, shipping is only $1 per book. For international orders, shipping is $3 for the first book, and $1 for each additional copy.
Thank you!
