Struck: Toon Tellegen

I’m not sure what to make of Toon Tellegen’s 2013 collection A Man and An Angel. It might be deep and metaphoric, it might be light comedy, philosophical, theological, profound or just pain nonsense. Or maybe pinches of all of that.

Take the word of the translator, poet Judith Wilkinson, who describes several critical takes on the book and A Man and An Angel is an enigmatic trip led by the prolific Dutch author who has been batting around ideas on the subject for years.

But what is that subject?

Taken at face value, always a risk with contemporary poetry, the collection of untitled poems lives up to the book’s name. The man and angel in question fight. A lot. And for anyone who has ever felt overpowered by the world around, and of late that feeling seems a common one, the constant refrain of the angel “striking down” the man (an occurrence that happens thirty times in the book at least) may feel familiar. 

That’s not to say that the man doesn’t fight back.

Believe me, said an angel, I will save you.
No, said a man, I don’t believe you.
You have to believe me, said the angel

and he drove away the ambition of the man
and his painful omniscience,
gave him peace
and large quantities of a rare,
resilient happiness, such as had never been described.

Do you believe me now, the angel asked
and he looked at the man with unparalleled love
and tenderness
and the man whispered: I don’t believe you.

Defiance is another constant in A Man and An Angel. Humanity, in the person of the man of the title, might be outgunned, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t resistance and a spirited fighting back.

Or is it more than one protagonist? More than one angel? Tellegen stays purposefully unclear about the nature of the characters. The collection reads episodically and doesn’t beg to be contained by conventionality.

It’s enough to know that the conflict exists. Within that constant our characters battle each other and occasionally themselves. As they do, Tellegen’s wit emerges, as in the untitled entry:

A man said:
I can’t live
and he lived long and meticulously

then he stood still and said:
but I can’t love
and he loved women and peace
and unspoken shyness

and an angel fought with him –
I can’t fight, said the man
and he fought like a tiger, like a hare,
and like a bag of bones

the sun went down
and still they fought on,
the man and the angel,
and the man said,
with a melancholy note in his voice:
now I know,
I can’t lose.

He knows he can’t lose and readers know from the structure of the poem that he must. The angel?  From poem to poem he’s all knowing and unknowing, victor and vanquished, and sometimes an amalgam of both.

And sometimes…

A man looked in a mirror
and thought:
I’m a bit like an angel,
There’s something gentle about me,
all those wrinkles and dimples
and then the way I laugh…

and an angel looked him in the eye
and said,
with tenderness and infinite charm:
…and I’m a bit like you, there’s something villainous about me, I don’t know,
something reckless, something rash…

and struck him down.

So much striking down.

At a certain point, maybe a third of the way through the book, my thoughts turned to Barry Yourgrau and his collection of short, short stories Wearing Dad’s Head. Like Yourgrau, who I first read decades ago, Tellegen’s poems carry with them a whimsy and absurdity that hints at deeper themes.

The first time I read Yourgrau, and then again when I read his second book A Man Jumps Out of an Airplane, I was left with the same resonance as when reading A Man and An Angel, both prompted me to wonder: am I being played for a fool?

Still… the writing is compelling and whether it’s some kind of performance, treatise, gag, or surreal monologue I wanted to keep reading.

And still the man and angel keep fighting.

Each iteration of that fight is different, populated by a different audience, distinguished by unique details, and yet sharing a sameness and repetition that lulls you into expectations that Tellegen will break. Though the man will get struck down, again.
A Man and An Angel is a book that begs to be shared. It has the same feel as letting someone in on a joke. And I share it with you as part of this Year of Poetry to encourage you to give a try to the wit, whimsy, memorable lines, and experience of witnessing this mortal and angelic struggle. Metaphor? Comedy? Nonsense? I think so.

Continuing this Year of Poetry next week with No Matter the Wreckage by Sarah Kay