THE SAUNA IS FULL OF MAIDS
Poems by Cheryl Fish (Shanti Arts, 2021)
reviewed by Joel Lewis
The nation and culture of Finland seem off the radar of the American imagination. Taking an early leap into our melting pot, the first Finns arrived in North America in 1654 as part of the short lived and barely remembered New Sweden colony. Finnish presence in the US remained minimal until 1870 when Finns, as subjects of the Russian Czar, began fleeing an oppressive Russification program. Finns were involved in mining and farming and settled in an area dubbed Finn Hook, stretching from upper Minnesota to Wisconsin, and centering on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. As white Lutherans, Finns encountered little prejudice; what anti-Finnish prejudice existed was political—there were many Finnish Wobblies and Communists, and Finns were active as strikers in the iron mines in the Mesabi Range.
Back in the motherland, Finland finally achieved independence in 1917, during WW! and the collapse of Czarist Russia. It fought two wars with Soviet Russia and then spent 45 years cautiously co-existing with the neighboring USSR to whom Finland lost 10% of its territory but not its sovereignty. Although a culturally rich nation (thanks to a good national educational system and a generous funding for cultural activities), little of it makes it to our shores.
Finland’s great contribution to international literary culture is the Kalevala, a synthetic epic of 22,795 verses whose source was the vanishing oral folk poetry of Finland. Polymath Elias Lonnrot made eleven expeditions through Finland and Karelia transcribing poetry from midnight sun rhapsodes, creating an epic that helped revive both the Finnish language and nationalist aspiration. Even today in Finland, a highly industrialized and digitalized nation the Kalevala is part of everyday life. Businesses ranging from banks to dairies are named after characters in the epic. Musicians from the great national composer Sibelius, the great jazz drummer Edward Vesela and Finn metal bands have found a source of material in an epic that can be traced back to the Ice Age and earlier.
The American poet/novelist/scholar Cheryl Fish has no Finnish or Nordica lineage to my knowledge save, perhaps, a deli knowledge of the Finlandia cheese brand that is shared by New Yorkers of a certain age. She has, however, lived, taught, and researched in Finland since 2007. “I dwell in the Northland for inspired intervals.”, she declares in her latest book of poems, The Sauna is Full of Maids, a book length documentary poem that explores a nation that is very much part of the Nordica’s social democratic culture yet remains rooted in its originating culture and folkways.
Exhibit A is the title of the collection which is from Book 4 of the Kalevala. In my admitted ignorance, I assumed that the sauna was just a variant of the Old-time Jewish schvitzes that one could find in the old Lower East Side. It was not until I visited Helsinki that I realized that saunas were more common than public restrooms. The Skywheel Helsinki not only offers views of the capitol of Suomi, but one can see these vistas in a sauna. Ms. Fish’s book is joyous exploration of Finland’s national sauna culture – if this was a better world, she would be endorsing one of the sauna units they sell on Amazon.
Back in the motherland, Finland finally achieved independence in 1917, during WW! and the collapse of Czarist Russia. It fought two wars with Soviet Russia and then spent 45 years cautiously co-existing with the neighboring USSR to whom Finland lost 10% of its territory but not its sovereignty. Although a culturally rich nation (thanks to a good national educational system and a generous funding for cultural activities), little of it makes it to our shores.
Finland’s great contribution to international literary culture is the Kalevala, a synthetic epic of 22,795 verses whose source was the vanishing oral folk poetry of Finland. Polymath Elias Lonnrot made eleven expeditions through Finland and Karelia transcribing poetry from midnight sun rhapsodes, creating an epic that helped revive both the Finnish language and nationalist aspiration. Even today in Finland, a highly industrialized and digitalized nation the Kalevala is part of everyday life. Businesses ranging from banks to dairies are named after characters in the epic. Musicians from the great national composer Sibelius, the great jazz drummer Edward Vesela and Finn metal bands have found a source of material in an epic that can be traced back to the Ice Age and earlier.
The American poet/novelist/scholar Cheryl Fish has no Finnish or Nordica lineage to my knowledge save, perhaps, a deli knowledge of the Finlandia cheese brand that is shared by New Yorkers of a certain age. She has, however, lived, taught, and researched in Finland since 2007. “I dwell in the Northland for inspired intervals.”, she declares in her latest book of poems, The Sauna is Full of Maids, a book length documentary poem that explores a nation that is very much part of the Nordica’s social democratic culture yet remains rooted in its originating culture and folkways.
Exhibit A is the title of the collection which is from Book 4 of the Kalevala. In my admitted ignorance, I assumed that the sauna was just a variant of the Old-time Jewish schvitzes that one could find in the old Lower East Side. It was not until I visited Helsinki that I realized that saunas were more common than public restrooms. The Skywheel Helsinki not only offers views of the capitol of Suomi, but one can see these vistas in a sauna. Ms. Fish’s book is joyous exploration of Finland’s national sauna culture – if this was a better world, she would be endorsing one of the sauna units they sell on Amazon.
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We pour rocks water on the rocks, over nakedness. Leave
Imperfection And judgement. Sweat and cold, wood and skin. The time of dry smoke. Music collective and separate (Two Maids in Toolo Tower Sauna) |
There is even a prose and photographic documentation of a visit to a sauna in Conway, MA, best known as the home of Archibald MacLeish.
Outside this brief visit to the USA and some poems set in Helsinki, this is a book of Northern Finland and of the Sami culture, which is a presence in Finland and the northern regions of Norway and Sweden, as well as the Karelian region of Russia.
Outside this brief visit to the USA and some poems set in Helsinki, this is a book of Northern Finland and of the Sami culture, which is a presence in Finland and the northern regions of Norway and Sweden, as well as the Karelian region of Russia.
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The sound of singing wind. A cold May long light. How does that sampo in the produce Grain, salt and gold from this thin air (Another Round of Heat) |
The epic is, of course, the Kalevala, and the Sampo is a sort of primordial vending machine built by the blacksmith Ilmarinen and a major plot point in the epic. The Sampo is a pervasive part of the Finnish imaginary – there have been Sampo banks, metal bands have sung about it and even Donald Duck and his waterfowl mishpoceh travelled to Finland looking for it in 1999 comic book Quest for Kalevala. As a poet who is associated with eco-poetics, Fish’s evocation of this epic also serves as hazard light regarding the encroaching effects of increasing climate change that threaten the lifeways and traditional economy of the Sami People.
It was a smart move to illustrate this book with photographs and they illuminate, rather than overwhelm the text. They range from professional photos to homey shots of friends and favorite saunas, as well as the poet’s son, who spent part of Second Grade in a Finnish classroom. This enjoyable and innovative book also bears the markers of the poet’s early apprenticeship in the workshops of NYC’s Poetry Project, where she studied with Alice Notely and Maureen Owen. The conversational tone and easy manner invites the reader rather than scare them off with tour guide cant, the oracular or the fashionable political preaching to a majority woke readership.
In wrapping up my deep dive research into things Finn I began thinking about the very concept of “The North” as a place in the Western Imaginary. Going beyond Yukon King, Nanook of The North and the Norse sagas. I recalled pianist Glen Gould’s The Idea Of The North (1967), a radical CBC Radio presentation consisting of the voices of Northern Canadians, edited to speak in a contrapuntal manner not unlike a Bach Fugue. Gould noted in 1970 film version of this documentary:
I've long been intrigued by that incredible tapestry of tundra and taiga which constitutes the Arctic and sub-Arctic of our country. I've read about it, written about it, and even pulled up my parka once and gone there. Yet like all but a very few Canadians I've had no real experience of the North. I've remained, of necessity, an outsider. And the North has remained for me, a convenient place to dream about, spin tall tales about, and, in the end, avoid.
Gould also happened to be a great admirer of Jean Sibelius and meeting him in Berlin in the 50s was a career highlight. His 1977 recording Glen Gould Plays Sibelius was a public acknowledgement of that admiration. One of the two piano suites he performs is called ” Kyllikki”, named after a young maiden in the Kalevala who lives on the isle of Saari. Sibelius is photographed on the cover very deep in thought, not facing the camera lens. To his left is a small picture of Gould. And behind the composer, almost overwhelming the foreground, are the mountains of Finland jacketed in snow.
Fish’s sense of The North is in stark contrast to Gould, who was so cold averse that he wore winter clothes in summer and was once arrested in Florida, his scarves and black overcoat indicating a vagrant to police. The North, in The Sauna Is Full of Maids, is a site of communalism and mutualism – romanticism aside, solitude in these parts can really be a death sentence. We meet people like Lea who sews thick multi-hued sock for the coldest months and states plainly “We live simply, we don’t need Much.” Fish declares her the “Martha Stewart of northern Ostrobothnia.” We also get a taste of a multi-cultural Finland in the person of Ali, an Afghani refugee who grew up “ dreaming of Nokia, gadgets, magic screens.” And on the obligatory foraging expedition, our author comes back with buckets of cloudberries and herkkutatti, more familiar to the American palate as porcini mushrooms.
And as for the great national composer Sibelius, he represents a Finland in search of national identity and a distinctive culture. Despite Gould’s radical interpretation of his piano music, Sibelius last major piece was the tone poem Tapiola (1926); he lived on another thirty years as an adored but virtually silent composer. Contemporary Finland is a sampo of musical activity. I’ll highly recommend sampling the records of the Tum, a Finnish jazz label that distributes in the US
After reading this evocative book, this sauna-averse reviewer might even pay a visit to a Suomi schvitz on his next trip to Helsinki, maybe even steaming up a Skywheel capsule spinning above The Pearl of the Baltic Sea.
It was a smart move to illustrate this book with photographs and they illuminate, rather than overwhelm the text. They range from professional photos to homey shots of friends and favorite saunas, as well as the poet’s son, who spent part of Second Grade in a Finnish classroom. This enjoyable and innovative book also bears the markers of the poet’s early apprenticeship in the workshops of NYC’s Poetry Project, where she studied with Alice Notely and Maureen Owen. The conversational tone and easy manner invites the reader rather than scare them off with tour guide cant, the oracular or the fashionable political preaching to a majority woke readership.
In wrapping up my deep dive research into things Finn I began thinking about the very concept of “The North” as a place in the Western Imaginary. Going beyond Yukon King, Nanook of The North and the Norse sagas. I recalled pianist Glen Gould’s The Idea Of The North (1967), a radical CBC Radio presentation consisting of the voices of Northern Canadians, edited to speak in a contrapuntal manner not unlike a Bach Fugue. Gould noted in 1970 film version of this documentary:
I've long been intrigued by that incredible tapestry of tundra and taiga which constitutes the Arctic and sub-Arctic of our country. I've read about it, written about it, and even pulled up my parka once and gone there. Yet like all but a very few Canadians I've had no real experience of the North. I've remained, of necessity, an outsider. And the North has remained for me, a convenient place to dream about, spin tall tales about, and, in the end, avoid.
Gould also happened to be a great admirer of Jean Sibelius and meeting him in Berlin in the 50s was a career highlight. His 1977 recording Glen Gould Plays Sibelius was a public acknowledgement of that admiration. One of the two piano suites he performs is called ” Kyllikki”, named after a young maiden in the Kalevala who lives on the isle of Saari. Sibelius is photographed on the cover very deep in thought, not facing the camera lens. To his left is a small picture of Gould. And behind the composer, almost overwhelming the foreground, are the mountains of Finland jacketed in snow.
Fish’s sense of The North is in stark contrast to Gould, who was so cold averse that he wore winter clothes in summer and was once arrested in Florida, his scarves and black overcoat indicating a vagrant to police. The North, in The Sauna Is Full of Maids, is a site of communalism and mutualism – romanticism aside, solitude in these parts can really be a death sentence. We meet people like Lea who sews thick multi-hued sock for the coldest months and states plainly “We live simply, we don’t need Much.” Fish declares her the “Martha Stewart of northern Ostrobothnia.” We also get a taste of a multi-cultural Finland in the person of Ali, an Afghani refugee who grew up “ dreaming of Nokia, gadgets, magic screens.” And on the obligatory foraging expedition, our author comes back with buckets of cloudberries and herkkutatti, more familiar to the American palate as porcini mushrooms.
And as for the great national composer Sibelius, he represents a Finland in search of national identity and a distinctive culture. Despite Gould’s radical interpretation of his piano music, Sibelius last major piece was the tone poem Tapiola (1926); he lived on another thirty years as an adored but virtually silent composer. Contemporary Finland is a sampo of musical activity. I’ll highly recommend sampling the records of the Tum, a Finnish jazz label that distributes in the US
After reading this evocative book, this sauna-averse reviewer might even pay a visit to a Suomi schvitz on his next trip to Helsinki, maybe even steaming up a Skywheel capsule spinning above The Pearl of the Baltic Sea.