Kuuskajaskari

"And as we now think and not a single thought goes as far up as the head."

Kuuskajaskari, from 1964, published as a bilingual edition in Finnish and in English of Leevi Lehto, is a seminal work of the Second Generation Finnish Modernism, by the virtuoso poet Jyrki Pellinen – a "description of life" that "is not tender", an account of the "agony of coming into the world", of a becoming-a-poet-as-a-thing in a process of endless dismemberment, struggling "among creatures of my own size, castle lords, furuncle-faces, robberly inclined, old women, and other such objects of nature".

"[A] collision of thinking with (standard) language, [...] a rift, a site of a violent crash, between intention and effect, experience and expression, thought and consciousness." – Leevi Lehto in his Afterword (online at www.leevilehto.net)

Jyrki Pellinen (born 1940) has published well over thirty books in Finnish. He is the receiver of the National Literary Price (in 1966, 1974, and 1984), and the prestigious Eino Leino Award(in 1991). He is also a talented musician and a prolific visual artist.