Continued Project Notes

Poem F

• Repetition of destruction, space
• Otherworldly
• Cycles—ones that inevitably happen or happen again and again
• Sharpness under the smoothness
• Implantation of a sharp mood—whether change or no

Poem G

• Unification
• “Grossness,” animal eating animal
• Just under the surface danger or violence
• Artic foxes can’t see or smell rodent prey, they must stand and listen for their prey
• Snowblind and sound driven
• Cryptic—is the fox the one that now has wings? Ears as wings?
• Rime= frost, crust
• Sharp, intense, hidden sharpness, the rime as dangerous even
• Confidence—strength of the leap
• Forbodence, constant underlying threat of danger dancing between the lines of danger and safety
• Artic fox as a metaphor for the cold

Possible layout ideas: To what degree do we want to set apart the sections?

• Three different sections: cold, astronomy, Icelandic/Scandinavian culture
• A specific set of art books maybe? With each section as its own “mini book”

Poem H

• Claustrophobia, the beauty of your own enclosed space
• The sky is heavy and small
• Containers
• Survival
• Hoarding food so that I can eat later
• Rotten seal meat? A culture of keeping food while you have it
• Reverence for animals
• A very cultural poem
• Practical and mythical application of animals and fruit
• Wild plum= fast growing, short lived, colony tree. Like grapes
• Fruit, abundance. Meat, scarcity
• Strangeness, uncomfortable, scary, violence, of an overfull barrel of seal meat
• Our abusive nature of food

Poem I

• Science and study
• Scientific expedition mood
• Intensity and assurance of oneself, begins as a question but ends with a period
• The earth as a thief
• Thinking about language as something analogous to the mechanisms as a barometer
• Barometer gives pressurized feeling—connection to previous poem
• Rhetorical question inspiring confidence
• “Argot of thieves” Language of thieves, pressure to understand and adhere to the truth of the original manuscript
• Idea of translator or poet as thief
• Swinging from extreme to extreme

Poem J

Poem K

• Juxtaposition of small versus large
• Snow globes
• Pointy moon, beam of light
• Thrusting into privacy and enclosure
• Consider altering “one soul of me”
• Angular lines of houses and moons contrasted with shape of breath
• Extreme theme of contraries constantly at play
• Tension, paradoxes, opposites

Poem L

• Infernal memory of the woman lost
• Purpose
• Forced containment, buried alive?
• Chaos and order, how the sea is chaotic, and the land is more ordered and structured
• The person as a landscape and the chaos and structure informing each other
• Height
• Illusion, seeing absence
• Fjallagras: moss
• Blodberg: creeping thyme
• Metaphorical burial, self-confinement
• A burial of syntax, closing each sentence
• Mixing of Icelandic with English

Cover Design: Different translations of cold on the cover to honor both Icelandic and English interactions

• The look of the Icelandic word
• Different meanings of the word cold
• Translations: English, Icelandic, and old Norse?
• English cold could be very saturated and bright and fade out for the Icelandic and old Norse
• Letterpress blank print impressions with no ink—silent text, white blanket
• Lots of stark, dramatic white, invisible pressings of foxes or other images connected to poem
• An actual letterpress, embossed cover
• Pressed without ink or only having ink in part of it

Intermixing of cultures, extends to self and nature and relation between cultures

Cold: trying to protect yourself from something that goes straight to your bones

Ghostly apparitions of ice, snow, and fog