Forty-one Objects

Poetry. Translated by David Keplinger. "One of the first Carsten René Nielsen poems I translated, now almost twenty years ago, was a little gem called 'X-Ray': 'She uses the tail of a fish skeleton as a fan. Musical tones pour out of her ears and float through the air like droplets; it is a room with no gravity. She dances slowly in place with her three most important tubes: the spine, and the windpipe, and the arms, which work as a balancing rod. Together they form three white lines in the dark. Her face is not seen.'"--from David Keplinger's introduction"The collaborative act is one of simultaneous engagement and removal. While you are the vehicle for this work in the new language, you have to be like the skin of the woman in 'X-Ray,' where only the barest bones of influence shine through. And your face must not be seen. There is something beautiful about the unexpected returns of this work. It would seem that the more invisible one tries to be, the more the benefit to one's own art and one's own life."--from World Cut Out with Crooked Scissors (New Issues, 2007)