Alphabet (poetry collection)
Alphabet is one of the most well-known poems of Inger Christensen, who was broadly considered to be Denmark's most prominent poet. The poem was originally published in 1981 in Danish as alfabet. An English language translation by Susanna Nied won the American-Scandinavian PEN Translation Prize in 1982.
Structure
"Alphabet" is a book-length poem following the tradition of Abecedarian poems, in which each line begins with the next letter of the alphabet sequentially from A through N. Each of the poem's fourteen sections of the poem corresponds to a letter of the alphabet, with line counts following the Fibonacci sequence is dictated by the Fibonacci sequence."Alphabet" has also been called a homonymous poem collection due to its focus on vowel and consonant sounds, and a 'systematic' poem due to its rule-based structure. Note that systematic poetry is not a formal mode of poetry, but may be used to describe the writer's process.
Themes
Alphabet deals with themes of nuclear war and ecological devastation.As the poem progresses and each section lengthens, an increasing number of elements related to destruction, death, and ecological devastation are introduced. The sections progress through the alphabet, ending with 'N', symbolizing nuclear destruction and implying an abrupt halt. The use of the Fibonacci sequence, Christensen later realised, was particularly appropriate for a plea that life can continue. "I found out after I had written alphabet that many plants follow these numbers. For example, sunflowers are ordered with the Fibonacci sequence - it's the way the seeds are placed."