Exploring Violence in Swedish Poetry: A Review of Lina Rydén Reynols' New Collection

"I Won't Help You" is the acclaimed new poetry collection by Lina Rydén Reynols. Thomas Götselius believes we must discuss the violence in Swedish poetry.

REVIEW. We need to talk about the violence in the latest Swedish poetry, specifically in Lina Rydén Reynols' work:

It is true that you can pierce a spear through a person from head down through the torso to keep her upright

Who has the right to say that it is not love?

This is the opening poem in Rydén Reynols' new collection "I Won't Help You." The brutal scene, referencing a medieval torture method, suggests that this way of "keeping someone upright" is about care. Or even love. How does that make sense? Is it a metaphor for something? Or just sensationalism?

Rydén Reynols debuted with the acclaimed poetry collection "Read My Lips" in 2019. After the poetry pamphlet "See Me as If I Were Dead" and the lyrical cannibal novel "Use Them as You Wish," she approaches a poetic mainstream. Here, there is an 'I' speaking and a 'you' being addressed. A traditional lyrical chamber play seems to begin. But one is mistaken. The poem's 'I' declares itself dead from the start—and moreover, murdered. On the suspect's bench is the book's 'you.'

Such a poem is easy to read metaphorically, as a failed love relationship. But the book's violence points in another direction, not related to the traditional drama of coupledom or violence in close relationships. The book's many shattered skulls and removed body parts rather aestheticize the violence. For what else can one call a poem that on one side of a spread has the line:

Knock out my teeth

And on the opposite:

Let them knock out

A stylish play on the ambiguous verb "knock out," but what does it mean? While I ponder this, the poem's 'I' frankly declares, "I would get myself more violence."

Is this, upon closer reflection, not the universal solution of our time? What problems today do not seem solvable through increased violence capital?

Rydén Reynols' book can actually be read as a distorted didactic poem for our time. "I won't help you," says the poem's 'I,' "I teach you." It is a poem that consciously speaks with a forked tongue. The 'I' is a mask the poet wears, not an actor in ordinary reality literature, the spectacular images a kind of subtle satire over a violent attention economy, not descriptions of real traumas.

There are no ironies or distortions here, only the vulnerability and resignation of the interrogated.

The risk is that such a poem only adds to the system—to "more violence." Perhaps that is why the book also contains another element in the form of a recurring interview situation. Or is it an interrogation? The bond between the questioner and the respondent is unclear, but the guilt is already established. There are no ironies or distortions here, only the vulnerability and resignation of the interrogated. The interrogations, in turn, lead to a third element in the composition. There, the sentence structure has broken down, and rhythm has taken over:

Stiff legs Rock the vein

And so on. The rhyme as the poetic residue of violence—and the poem's simultaneous comfort.

It is a fiercely strong book.

Thomas Götselius is a professor of literature at Stockholm University and a critic at Expressen.