Article
“Used but not useful” language: on Nano Shabtai’s first book
The Iron Girl
June 07, 2009
When I began to read the book, I felt as if I’d gone on a date with an adventurous, experienced persona, someone [ . . . ] evasive who was at the same time exposed and kicking. One of Shabtai’s voices is sweet and faintly seductive, like the monologue of a girl-woman on public display. But the fearless, uninhibited “iron girl” – nothing makes her flinch – emerges from under this cover almost immediately, telling about her [ . . . ] sexual and hallucinatory experiences, some of them perversions, and her intimate thoughts about family members, for example, her father, the poet Aharon Shabtai. Following close on these narratives are emotional responses, and thoughts about what people will say, and what the self, the heroine of the book, has to say [ . . . ] In addition to the dramatic, theatrical nature of these poems, there is something about them which is intimate and confessional, recalling a poetic diary-blog on the internet.
[ . . . ] The poet has made a brave choice: to turn her life, her pain and her moments of happiness into a controlled linguistic narrative, in which invention is combined with facts, and the wish to be found in all sorts of places and situations, with all sorts of people, is threaded among real and ordinary occurrences.
This poetic decision, whether conscious or intuitive, allows the poet to write about her father, for example, in a highly personal and intimate way; about wild sexual experiences; about her mother and sister – in a manner which keeps them at a virtual-aesthetic distance, in language that is highly aware of itself. With all the danger involved in treating such personal material so revealingly, the book never slips into embarrassing gut-spilling.
[ . . . ] What are the poet’s spiritual and artistic needs? I would say that her need is to define the boundaries of identity, her presence in a violent and difficult world which threatens to blur and engulf personality; to settle accounts with many people, places and periods freighted with hurt and affronts; to condemn and praise by means of poetic language; to communicate with other poets and artists. She succeeds, with great talent. Links
The Bejerano review in its entirety in Hebrew
An essay by Dorit Weisman about Nano Shabtai in Hebrew
“I’m in Tadeusz Kantor’s room/ a quarter hour a whole world/ we meet in the dead bed/ ( . . .) he sings to me in Polish/ I answer in gibberish/ feel used but not useful/ he wants me the way a director/ muses on old age/ he wants the girl in me/ ( . . . ) I’m all red and steamy/ Tadeusz’s hot mouth seethes fish/ ( . . .) nice and now we’ve got to split.”
(‘In the Dead Bed’)
At the beginning of a poem that alludes to Polish director and playwright Tadeusz Kantor, author of The Dead Class, Nano Shabtai plays with the name of his work and changes it to suit her needs. The question is: what really are the existential, artistic needs of this young and challenging writer [ . . . ] with several theater projects already to her credit. The phrase “used but not useful” [ . . . ] precisely defines the position of ordinary, everyday language alongside the “useless” language of poetry, and recalls, in an ironic reversal, the title of a book by [the late Israeli poet] David Avidan, Useful Poems. In her book, Shabtai declares her equality with language. She feels that [ . . . ] everything that will happen or has happened to her [ . . . ] will undergo a personal linguistic transformation, for good or bad. She isn’t at all disturbed about whether [her work] meets the criteria of [someone else’s] poetics, because, in light of the overwhelming existential situation, there’s no need to be concerned with the aesthetics of poetry. (‘In the Dead Bed’)
When I began to read the book, I felt as if I’d gone on a date with an adventurous, experienced persona, someone [ . . . ] evasive who was at the same time exposed and kicking. One of Shabtai’s voices is sweet and faintly seductive, like the monologue of a girl-woman on public display. But the fearless, uninhibited “iron girl” – nothing makes her flinch – emerges from under this cover almost immediately, telling about her [ . . . ] sexual and hallucinatory experiences, some of them perversions, and her intimate thoughts about family members, for example, her father, the poet Aharon Shabtai. Following close on these narratives are emotional responses, and thoughts about what people will say, and what the self, the heroine of the book, has to say [ . . . ] In addition to the dramatic, theatrical nature of these poems, there is something about them which is intimate and confessional, recalling a poetic diary-blog on the internet.
[ . . . ] The poet has made a brave choice: to turn her life, her pain and her moments of happiness into a controlled linguistic narrative, in which invention is combined with facts, and the wish to be found in all sorts of places and situations, with all sorts of people, is threaded among real and ordinary occurrences.
This poetic decision, whether conscious or intuitive, allows the poet to write about her father, for example, in a highly personal and intimate way; about wild sexual experiences; about her mother and sister – in a manner which keeps them at a virtual-aesthetic distance, in language that is highly aware of itself. With all the danger involved in treating such personal material so revealingly, the book never slips into embarrassing gut-spilling.
[ . . . ] What are the poet’s spiritual and artistic needs? I would say that her need is to define the boundaries of identity, her presence in a violent and difficult world which threatens to blur and engulf personality; to settle accounts with many people, places and periods freighted with hurt and affronts; to condemn and praise by means of poetic language; to communicate with other poets and artists. She succeeds, with great talent. Links
The Bejerano review in its entirety in Hebrew
An essay by Dorit Weisman about Nano Shabtai in Hebrew
© Maya Bejerano
Translator: Lisa Katz
Source: Review of Nano Shabtai’s The Iron Girl, Yediot Ahronoth and Hemed Books, Tel Aviv, 2006. Excerpted and translated from the Haaretz book supplement, 27 February 2006.
Sponsors
Partners
LantarenVenster – Verhalenhuis Belvédère