Norwegian Woods (OT)

There are similarities between his relationship to nature and his relationship to folk poetry and other types of folklore, Old Norse and Western tradition, classical Chinese poetry and Japanese Haikus, as well as Eastern religion: primarily Zen Buddhism. Hauge evinces an immediate empathy with these traditions. He seems to speak directly with and with familiarity about Acestes (from the Aeneid); figures from the classical Chinese era; and characters from early Nordic tradition, such as Ogmund of Spånheim (from The Saga of Håkon Håkonsson), Leif Eiriksson and others. Such poems are also often meta-texts, such as “I have three Poems”. It tells of Emily Dickinson who wrote so many poems, but published hardly any: “she just cut open a packet of tea / and wrote another one.” This is how poems should be, they should ”…smell of tea. / Or of raw earth and freshly split wood.”