Janice Soderling: Poets Respond (Rattle's weekly current events competition)
 

I was very pleased to see that Janice is the winner of this week's Poet's Respond competition run by Rattle with her poem Dolphin Legend of the World Before. Congratulations Janice! I really enjoyed reading this. A well-deserved win.

I'm pretty sure that this link will only work today as it's posted as their daily poem.

-Matt

Wow!! "As the heads escaped their boxes. . ."


Ed

Thanks Matt, Ed, and not least Tim at Rattle.

A few words on the poem itself.

The trochaic tetrameter will remind (most) Americans, at least the poets, at least the oldies, of the faux legendary poem, The Song of Hiawatha by Longfellow. FWIW, Longfellow himself borrowed it from the Finnish epic poem Kalevala. The strong meter has previously lent itself to many parodic poems.

Kalevala, which means "Land of the Heroes", was an epic poem composed by Elias Lönnrot in Finnish, a language with a natural trochaic tetrameter rhythm. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalevala Kalevala is based on fragments of oral folklore, a national epos. It was published in 1835 during a period of strong nationalism in Finland. The country was then the Grand Duchy of Finland, under Russian rule since being ceded in 1809 under the terms of the Finnish War, Sweden's last war. Previously, during the Great Northern War, Sweden—once a so-called Great Power—had previously lost its Baltic provinces to Russia.

More trivia. Should you have occasion to visit the Finnish National Museum in Helsinki, you can see some fine paintings depicting the Kalevala legend by Akseli Gallen-Kallela http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akseli_Gallen-Kallela who, incidentally, was the brother-in-law of Jean Sibelius, Finland's preeminent composer whose works include Finlandia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5zg_af9b8c (this includes, besides majestic music, beautiful landscapes, the Northern Lights and some amazing wildlife photography—and hopefully no ads. Really it is worth the time). Many other Sibelius works are based on the Kalevala legend.

There is always more to a poem than one immediately realizes.

Just to say that the title's already been changed. Thanks for the background. I'll check out legend.

- Matt

Thanks, Matt. Thanks, Tim.

Thanks Janice for the poem and the background!

Did you really write it in response to Putin’s “nuclear confession”?

Yes, I did. I wrote my first version when I saw the BBC link on the Internet on March 15, and made a few minor changes a few days later, punctuation and one change in a word.

The "background" I wrote today. I am familiar with it since I live in Sweden and have long been interested in neighboring Finland and its history, esp. as it coincides with Swedish history. The "background" didn't have bearing on the poem when I wrote it. But as I started the tale of Longfellow and Kalevala for a post here, I got carried away and didn't know when to stop.

Congratulations, Janice. It is hard to turn the news into a good poem. Taking a wildly different perspective on it, as you do, is one of the more successful ways to make it work.

Susan

Excellent poem, Janice. Excellent!

I have performed Finlandia many times and love it. I saw that youtube a couple of months ago (and just watched it again). The most exciting scene among all the beautiful moments are those fledgling ducks (starting around 3:35), risking life and wing leaping from a hollow at the top of a lofty tree to get to the lake. Also, just before that, the young bear scratching his back on a tree trunk is humorous. The nature footage throughout is spectacular, especially that osprey at the end diving into the water.

Warm thanks, Susan and Martin.