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Johann P. Tammen released in 2006, a trilingual edition (Gaelige, German, and English) of And skyward the seas. The text layout works surprisingly well, and if you find a poem you like, having it in three languages feels like a bonus. Such is the case for me with the work Snow summer night at Loccum, which as it seeks to capture and present a snowscape for the reader, has a certain acrobatic delicacy in its play with light, sound and movement. Perhaps poetry is finished when it tires with snow. The endless versatility it offers the imagination is irresistible for most poets. But probably because of this very fact, this poet has drawn his words, over a layer of self. When it opens with "Flakes all forlorn Snow in a Flurry" (not to be confused with the Mc Flurry of Burger empire fame), it soon gives way to "the ear that listens and sounds out the poem's engineering". And so this muted awarness enters the readers consciousness, who thanks to having these three languages in the one bed, can also begin to tinker. Reading the Irish we can remove the burger pun, with an sneachta ina raiste. And we can make the snow crisper by reading der lauen Zunge der Nacht instead of the mild tongue of the night. It's alot of polyglot fun, kind of overriding a work that has at times a stilted academic resonance to it. This feeling emerges as Tammen engages the themes concerning the production (a mechanics of information flow) and function of poetry: without ever really exciting the reader. This is not really a surprise, these words were written for other words, as much as other people. It often feels cold and impersonal then. But for the same reasons, on the level of ideas, certain pieces work very well:


this poem
is merely a poem
a machine gleefully dancing
between the words
mocking other machines