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The Thirteenth Month
The Thirteenth Month introduces acclaimed Danish poet Inge Pedersen to English-speaking readers for the first time, in a volume of translations by the distinguished American poet/translator Marilyn Nelson. Spanning her career since 1982, compiling the best of five volumes of writing along with two previously unpublished works, The Thirteenth Month is an opportunity for a brand-new audience to appreciate the lyricism and realism of one of Europe's finest poets.
- GenresPoetry
56 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 14, 2024
“Want
an evening with dark
blue frostcrust shining
on the snow around the house
and my knees
in the hollow of yours
my nose against your back
my hand on your warm
sleeping belly
Want
an evening with hot
blue asphalt
and sweet wickedness
my gaze
on the curve
of another man's back
till I am an animal panting
to surrender to
Want
everything that I don't
Want”
—
“A steep, muddy path past a field with cows and down through the woods, where you might expect to come upon a forest lake. A sun that pling, pling leaps out between the dark tree trunks and hits the chrome of the bicycles, as they ride ever faster and steeper downhill. The moist new leaves of beeches swipe against her face, and at the sight of his back, all its devil-may-care energy, a smile bubbles up in the corners of her mouth and makes the woods so dense that you might imagine a bellowing stag would soon appear. But no. No forest lake turns up, no stag, not so much as a runaway spotted cow. But when he suddenly brakes at the lake that isn't there, when he throws his bike into a thicket of silence and turns and catches her as she starts to fall, when they sink into the grass in a shared confusion of zippers, hooks, narrow jeans legs, not only her mouth, but her whole body becomes a bubble. And not just a little nondescript plop, no, an Icelandic geyser, whose smoldering explosivity she's just learned about in school. And now that's started she imagines it as heaven-storming. She is a geyser: that much is clear. What isn't clear is the shadow, the slow gray film, that comes down afterwards from the beech trees and settles like a damp, mild melancholy over her face. And now one of two things could happen. With closed mouth he could stroke the shadow of salt on her cheeks. Or he could open his eyes, shake his head, say what the hell are you crying about?”
—
“We summon courage.
We draw near.
To breathe in deeply someplace
where our indolent
imperfect bodies can open:
Here is my emptiness.
Show me yours. Perhaps it is
the old black and white gnarled tangle
of stiffness, stubbornness, perhaps
an old glacier we touch
and mark how the cheeks
taste salt we draw near
a place we melt”
—
“It's winter now, and according to statistics I should be dead. Drip, drip, one day I'm standing in a thaw and listening to the childhood chattering of Siberian grackles under a light gray sky that drizzles into puddles. Another day it's cold so my skin gets stiff and old and burnt by ice. And, too, different kinds of groaning and creaking in the walls of my inner cells and channels confirm that 1, like the others growing in farther rows, must prepare myself for a soon and perhaps sudden felling. No one makes his own decision. And no one can in an instant's illumination mark his own sinking on a clearly charted route. Anyway I live just as much as always in the purple ice-flowers I dream at night while the snow accumulates and drifts like quilts on the small shoots growing around me. Anyway I breathe just as much as always, a voice pushes out in a rush of oxygen coming close to being a tongue, another word a whole body, and if I could choose it would end with lying down black against white in an easy to move away pile. Plain, no unneeded weight, whistled through by the wind, simple as haiku.”
an evening with dark
blue frostcrust shining
on the snow around the house
and my knees
in the hollow of yours
my nose against your back
my hand on your warm
sleeping belly
Want
an evening with hot
blue asphalt
and sweet wickedness
my gaze
on the curve
of another man's back
till I am an animal panting
to surrender to
Want
everything that I don't
Want”
—
“A steep, muddy path past a field with cows and down through the woods, where you might expect to come upon a forest lake. A sun that pling, pling leaps out between the dark tree trunks and hits the chrome of the bicycles, as they ride ever faster and steeper downhill. The moist new leaves of beeches swipe against her face, and at the sight of his back, all its devil-may-care energy, a smile bubbles up in the corners of her mouth and makes the woods so dense that you might imagine a bellowing stag would soon appear. But no. No forest lake turns up, no stag, not so much as a runaway spotted cow. But when he suddenly brakes at the lake that isn't there, when he throws his bike into a thicket of silence and turns and catches her as she starts to fall, when they sink into the grass in a shared confusion of zippers, hooks, narrow jeans legs, not only her mouth, but her whole body becomes a bubble. And not just a little nondescript plop, no, an Icelandic geyser, whose smoldering explosivity she's just learned about in school. And now that's started she imagines it as heaven-storming. She is a geyser: that much is clear. What isn't clear is the shadow, the slow gray film, that comes down afterwards from the beech trees and settles like a damp, mild melancholy over her face. And now one of two things could happen. With closed mouth he could stroke the shadow of salt on her cheeks. Or he could open his eyes, shake his head, say what the hell are you crying about?”
—
“We summon courage.
We draw near.
To breathe in deeply someplace
where our indolent
imperfect bodies can open:
Here is my emptiness.
Show me yours. Perhaps it is
the old black and white gnarled tangle
of stiffness, stubbornness, perhaps
an old glacier we touch
and mark how the cheeks
taste salt we draw near
a place we melt”
—
“It's winter now, and according to statistics I should be dead. Drip, drip, one day I'm standing in a thaw and listening to the childhood chattering of Siberian grackles under a light gray sky that drizzles into puddles. Another day it's cold so my skin gets stiff and old and burnt by ice. And, too, different kinds of groaning and creaking in the walls of my inner cells and channels confirm that 1, like the others growing in farther rows, must prepare myself for a soon and perhaps sudden felling. No one makes his own decision. And no one can in an instant's illumination mark his own sinking on a clearly charted route. Anyway I live just as much as always in the purple ice-flowers I dream at night while the snow accumulates and drifts like quilts on the small shoots growing around me. Anyway I breathe just as much as always, a voice pushes out in a rush of oxygen coming close to being a tongue, another word a whole body, and if I could choose it would end with lying down black against white in an easy to move away pile. Plain, no unneeded weight, whistled through by the wind, simple as haiku.”
January 27, 2008
This is good, but considering its peers in the Field Translation series, I'm so far underwhelmed.
December 17, 2017
Poetry from Denmark, translated by CT Poet Laureate— perfect for the cold weather...
August 13, 2026
På højdepunkterne fantastisk i sprog og billeder, men det virker forhastet og uredigeret og med mangel af gennemarbejdning.
Digtsamlingen har ikke nogen egentlig rød tråd, der er små øjeblikke blandet med livsbilleder uden synderlig ordning og rækkefølge.
Jeg synes det er ærgerligt, fordi i de bedste digte kunne Inge med lidt hjælp fra editor være blevet guidet og vejledt til at præsentere en langt stærkere digtsamling der sagtens kunne være på højde med de bedste.
Der er lidt grammatisle fejl som også trækker ned.
Digtsamlingen har ikke nogen egentlig rød tråd, der er små øjeblikke blandet med livsbilleder uden synderlig ordning og rækkefølge.
Jeg synes det er ærgerligt, fordi i de bedste digte kunne Inge med lidt hjælp fra editor være blevet guidet og vejledt til at præsentere en langt stærkere digtsamling der sagtens kunne være på højde med de bedste.
Der er lidt grammatisle fejl som også trækker ned.
December 15, 2025
I love her voice. Read this in one sitting.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews