The worst and the best

Søren Ulrik Thomsen is one of the most substantial poets in Denmark today. This is due in large part to his masterful command of the Danish language, its range of meanings and nuances of sound.

By : Neal Ashley Conrad

Søren Ulrik Thomsen’s newly published seventh collection, Det værste og det bedste (The Worst and the Best), offers a closer look at his mastery, for this book presents poems that are far more open, personally revealing, and aesthetically clarified than ever before.

For Søren Ulrik Thomsen, the beautiful, most alluring (the best) is intrinsically bound to the ugly, loathsome, and frightening (the worst). As the title suggests, this book unfolds along two strands, respectively enumerating what gratifies/pleases/delights the poet and what triggers his loathing/fear/despair/sorrow. These two strands include and intertwine with various others. They appear not in rote succession, but rather in reference to specific places, especially in and around Copenhagen, accompanied by small, private, personal descriptions that dissolve into existential observations, then further dissolve into a precise rendering of a love relationship or into an attempt to encompass what creates aesthetic allure. It is Søren Ulrik Thomsen’s ability to demonstrate—and to actualize in his poetry—how each of the levels we live on has its own provisional value, that makes The Worst and the Best interesting reading far beyond the borders of Denmark.

The recurring thematic shifts and the spaces between stanzas, which give the book its distinctive openness, invite a wide variety of readings. The key quality of the poems here is their deeply personal tone. Although this may make the poems seem somewhat private, they bear multifaceted witness to a temperament in relation to its time, its background, and its beginnings, to poetic language, and to all that delights and dismays us despite ourselves.

With this volume, for the first time, Thomsen has collaborated with another artist. As soon as he finished the 21 poems in the book, he sent them to renowned graphic artist Ib Spang Olsen, who then created the book’s 21 powerfully evocative illustrations. Thomsen’s original inspiration came from the poem “the worst and the best” by the American author Charles Bukowski. The story: twenty years ago, Thomsen wrote a paraphrase of that poem, and he has wanted to create a new, expanded version ever since. Now, here it is. But this is, in fact, more than a new version standing on its own as a unique poetic work. The Worst and the Best simultaneously enters into dialogue with Bukowski’s poem and with others’ poems as well—a feature that should prove especially intriguing for international readers. Finally, it is important to note the elegant interplay between the loose, open form and the tight structure of themes and content, evident throughout the book. The individual poems are at once rhythmically grounded and endowed with poetic force and an indelible precision.

Søren Ulrik Thomsen’s literary output spans twenty years, from City Slang in 1981 to this new suite of poems. Between 1981 and 1996 Thomsen published five collections of poems, a book of poetic theory, and a book of reflections on the creative process, all recently reissued in the multi-volume set titled Skriftlige arbejder (Written Works, 2001). Each book in the set expresses a literary exploration of a particular, thematically defined area. At the same time, each book testifies to an aesthetic struggle with a specific form of ugly beauty, culminating in the arabesque of poems titled Det skabtes vaklen (The Tottering of Creation, 1996). Yet it is with the more subdued The Worst and the Best that Thomsen achieves a breakthrough, adding a new dimension to his poetry.

Neal Ashley Conrad, MA, has written a book on Søren Ulrik Thomsens authorship which was published in 2002.

Translated by Susanna Nied