The Best American Poetry

Modern Mongolian Literature in Seven Days - Part 6: T-Ö Erdenetsogt [by Simon Wickham-Smith]

T-Ö Erdenetsogt (b1971 who, like yesterdays hero Bavuudorj, is heavily influenced by Buddhism, was one of the cofounders of the BISHÜBI (an acronym for three words which roughly translate as "worshipping wisdom") movement during the late 1980s.  He has published a couple of books of poetry including Setgelin ogtorgui (my translation of which, Sky of Mind, was published last year).  Today's download constitutes about half of that manuscript, and shows the influence both of Buddhism and of the work of the c19 writer Danzanravjaa.  Notice how frequently these poems contain elements of prayer and spirtual aspiration: the Mongolian original of this book contained pictures of Erdenetsogt praying before an altar, and it is highly unusual for Mongolian writers to acknowledge religious or spiritual affiliation.

Erdenetsogt now lives with his wife and young daughter in Dublin, Ireland.  Unfortunately, I have no pictures of him, but I do have the following image, of me holding his daughter last year in the offices of the Mongolian Academy of Poetry and Culture, and that single degree of separation with today's featured poet will have to suffice for now.

Download Erdenetsogt

Tomorrow:  L Ölziitögs

etymology for poets [by Simon Wickham-Smith]

here is by far one of the most addictive sites on the internet.  Sergey Starostin was one of the greatest linguists of his day and worked extensively in the reconstruction of a number of proto-languages.  This site offers a vast interwoven database of languages and etymologies.  I have had hours of nerdy fun here, including finding that the Mongolian word for a young girl (ohin) is cognate with the Latin for a wife (uxor - whence uxorious)...joy of joys!

Modern Mongolian Literature in Seven Days - Part 5: Ts Bavuudorj [by Simon Wickham-Smith]

Tsogdorjin Bavuudorj (b1969) has published six books of poetry, one of which has been published in English (When Humans Become Grass) by Mend-Ooyo's Mongolian Academy of Poetry and Culture.  In 2006 he won the prestigious Natsagdorj Prize in recognition of his poetry.  Bavuudorj's work is very heavily influenced by the ideas promoted by Yavuuhulan and his students, but his expression and style is deeply influenced by spirituality and by an almost surrealist, visionary sense.  The extract from When Humans Become Grass available for download comprises about a third of the book's contents, and when read next to the work of poets such as Mend-Ooyo and Dashbalbar and, looking further back, to that of the nineteenth century poet-monk Danzanravjaa, it will be clear that his sensibilities are rooted in the history and the traditions of premodern Mongolia.

Download Bavuudorj

Tomorrow:  T-Ö Erdenetsogt

Modern Mongolian Literature in Seven Days - Part 4: O Dashbalbar [by Simon Wickham-Smith]

O Dashbalbar (1957-1999) was the youngets of Yavuuhulan's three main students, but also the one whom the other two recognised as somehow their leader and their teacher.  He spent the first thirty-seven years of his life immersed in books and poetry and the land with which he felt a close connection.  Then, in 1994, he was elected to the Great Hural as an independent parliamentarian, and proceeded in this way to lobby against the proposed Land Law, which would grant private ownership to tracts of the Mongolian state, which historically had been free for the nomadic people to use as pastureland and as a place to set up their camps.  He died, at the age of only forty-two, in October 1999, in a mysterious death which some consider to have been murder by poisoning, in response to his political activity and popular support.

His book The River Flows Gently was published in 1986, and about half of it is reproduced for download below.  This includes his famous love poem "For You," as well as a number of poetic prose pieces dealing with culture and the nature of art and beauty.  In addition to my introductary essay to this book, you can also download the portrait by his friend and fellow-poet Mend-Ooyo (see yesterday's post), which includes a final section written a few days following Dashbalbar's death.

Download The River Flows Gently (excerpt)

Download Dashbalbar River Gently Flows Intro

Download DASHBALBAR’S PRAYER OF LOVE

Tomorrow:  Ts Bavuudorj

Modern Mongolian Literature in Seven Days - Part 3: G Mend-Ooyo [by Simon Wickham-Smith]

G Mend-Ooyo (b1952) was born into a nomadic family.  Trained as a teacher, and the second of Yavuuhulan's three main students, hehas now published over thirty books of poetry, criticism and essays, and has received numerous awards in recognition of his work to promote Mongolian culture.

Having worked with Mend-Ooyo for four years now, I have noticed that he is constantly writing, constantly thinking about how to encourage Mongolians to value their history and traditions.  His basic thematic material can be seen from the text of Nomadic Lyrics (download below), translated by S Sumiya, Peter K Marsh and myself.  Also available is the Prolog to Golden Hill, the work which regards as his magnum opus, and the one which he was most keen to have available in English.  This is an extraordinary book - fiction and history and auto/biography and vision and poetry - and one which I think should find a publisher (adventurous publishers take note!) in Europe or the US.

Mend-Ooyo is foundera nd director of the Mongolian Academy of Poetry and Culture in Ulaanbaatar.  He is developing a project to establish an international poetry center in the heart of Ulaanbaatar, dedicated to the memory of Yavuuhulan.

Download Nomadic Lyrics (Mend-Ooyo)

Download Prolog

Modern Mongolian Literature in Seven Days - Part 2: D Nyamsüren [by Simon Wickham-Smith]

Danzangiin Nyamsüren (1949-2002) was one of Yavuuhulan's three principal students.  Unlike both Mend-Ooyo (coming tomorrow) and Dashbalbar (coming Wednesday), Nyamsüren preferred to keep out of the spotlight, spending much of his adult life living and working in the small town of Ereentsav, on the Russian border, where his wife Handmaa worked (and still works) as an immigration official at the railway crossing.  In his essay "Warmth," the journalist B Zolbayar wrote an account of a visit he made to Handmaa in Ereentsav following Nyamsüren's death (download my translation below).

Nyamsüren was influenced primarily by the atmosphere of Yavuuhulan's work, his intimate relationship with the landscape and with the natural world.  In one of Nyamsüren's most famous poems, "The Four Seasons" (not reproduced in the text available below for download), Nyamsüren offers a long litany of praise for nature and for the area where he lives:  each line describes one aspect of this area as "lovely," it is like a mantra almost, an enchantment.

Nyamsüren published three books during his life - Spring's Flow (1984), The Nature of Mind (1991) and From the Lonely Steppe (2001).  This year, which would have marked Nyamsüren's 60th birthday, Mend-Ooyo's Mongolian Academy of Poetry and Culture will reissue these books, in addition to my translations in a one-volume edition.  According to Handmaa, two further volumes remain unpublished, and I am trying to secure these texts for inclusion or, at least, for later publication.

Download Nyamsüren

Download Warmth (B Zolbayar)

Tomorrow:  G Mend-Ooyo

Find Simon's previous posts about Mongolian literature here.

Mongolian Literature: Background Briefing [by Simon Wickham-Smith]

here are a couple of short articles which I wrote for the IIAS journal a few years ago, one on the C19 monk/scholar/nationalist/poet/womaniser/pedagog/dramaturge Danzanravjaa and his mysterious death, and the other on the younger generation of poets.

Download Danzanravjaa IIAS

Download Mongolian poetry IIAS

Myagmarin Amarhüü paints poets... [by Simon Wickham-Smith]

The first four editions of Modern Mongolian Literature in Seven Days come equipped with pictures of the poets discussed, painted by Myagmarin Amarhüü, a poet and painter from Ulaanbaatar.  

This, for those who like to have an image to guide them, is Yavuuhulan, as painted by Amarhüü...

And this is an essay I wrote to accompany my translation of a book of Yavuuhulan's poems, which will be published this spring in Ulaanbaatar.

Download Yavuuhulan

Background Music [by Simon Wickham-Smith]

While reading modern Mongolian poetry, what better accompaniment could there be than unusual and unrecognised experimental music?  In my life away from Mongolian lit, I am not a poet (far from it) but a composer, and so i thought that I would offer some music and composers with which and with whom you will probably not be familiar.

It is always pleasurable to blow my own trumpet.  And so here is a whole page of my music, in this otherwise excellent archive.  

And here is an interview with the late great Richard Maxfield, conducted on November 11th 1960, with consequent curiosity from the interviewer.  Maxfield (1927-1969) - with whom I, James Joyce and the Mongolian revolutionary leader Sühbaatar share a birthday (2 February) - was an extraordinarily talented composer, who taught a composition class at UCLA during the late 1950s where LaMonte Young, Terry Riley, Pauline Oliveros, Loren Rush and Morton Subotnik came together.  He must have had the most phenomenal hand-ear coördination, listen to his wonderful piece "Cough Music" on the interview tape, and marvel at the deexterity and beauty of the result.

You can order the only CD available of his music (where he is twinned oddly, yet effectively, with an early piece by Harold Budd) here.  Read more about Maxfield at LaMonte Young and Marian Zazeela's MELA Foundation website www.melafoundation.org.  What you will not find is the following poem requiem by Diane Wakoski for Maxfield, who threw himself from a window in NYC in June of 1969, while high on drugs.  His was, in my opinion, a tragic loss to contemporary music, but we are still very lucky to have a few pieces and the talented (and now senior) composers which his brilliance helped to foster.

Download The Story of Richard Maxfield

Modern Mongolian Literature in Seven Days - Part 1: B Yavuuhulan [by Simon Wickham-Smith]

In 1956, Nikita Krushchev openly and explicitly criticised the record of Josef Stalin and initiated a thaw in Soviet society. Begziin Yavuuhulan (1929-1982) who, at that time, was beginning his career as a poet and translator, saw the opportunity to wrench Mongolian literature from its almost two decades languishing among the repetitive grimness of paeans to Stalin and Lenin, encomia to noble peasantry and opprobria against capitalism and the non-communist world.  His idea was to revive the literary traditions of pre-revolutionary Mongolia - respect for the land, the changing seasons, the celebration of the history and lineage of the Mongolian people, and even (occasionally, clandestinely) an acknowledgement of shamanic and Buddhist spirituality - and to clothe them in the stylistic and thematic language of the modern world.  The movement which resulted from his efforts was the "New Tendency" (in Mongolian Shine handlaga) and this can be seen as preparing the ground for much of the poetry which was composed in Mongolia during the latter half of the twentieth century.

Yavuuhulan wrote a great deal, and he gathered around himself students who would become the most influential poets of the 1980s and 1990s.  He was also a prolific translator, and is well-known for his work on Sergey Yesenin. Here are some examples of Yavuuhulan's poetry, which illustrate I think what he was trying to do with the tradition, together with an essay written by his student G Mend-Ooyo, one of the subjects of tomorrow's post and the director of the Mongolian Academy of Culture and Poetry in Ulaanbaatar.

Download Yavuuhulan

Download Mend-Ooyo on Yavuu

Tomorrow:  Nyamsüren and Mend-Ooyo