Bengt O Björklund's "I Missed Woodstock" (Human Error Publishing) reviewed by Belinda Subraman

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I have just finished this impressive poetic bio written in free verse. There are many memorable phrases and poetic turns in Bengt's life and his writings. I’ve always felt a kinship with him although we’ve lived vastly different lives. My greatest adventures and experimentations came later in life. As a young man, Bengt says,” I learned to run naked/across meadows and pastures/amongst surprised cows.”  Meanwhile I was merely walking in pastures, singing Joni Mitchell and stepping in poo.

By the time Bengt was in Turkish prison over a few grams of hash and discovering the joys of learning, creating art and writing poetry, I was living in a fantasy (but healing) world of reading philosophy, history, creation with words and art, expressing myself when I could not talk. I found a safe place of wonder and possibilities. It felt like a calling. In more drastic circumstances Bengt says, ”I had long conversations/with Rabindranath Tagore/and I often woke up in Russia/in the late nineteenth century.//The Japanese slowly moved/deep into my eyes/and tales are mixed/with reality/and Dylan Thomas.//I moved through the days/like a monk in his prayers.”

With or without drugs it is beautiful to see the world open up to unlimited possibilities of learning and perception.  People get to this point in many ways and travel is nearly always an important aspect of the never ending wonder of being human.  Alas, many or most seem to keep the same set of guidelines handed them from birth and when an opportunity to expand arises they reject it and choose to remain small and call the opportunity and/or those who offered it, unwanted, not of their kin so it must be “evil.”  How wonderful to finally arrive to a place as Bengt describes. “The world vibrated/in the smallest atom/and everything was just as important/except that which obscured.//An abandoned house/at the edge of the road/offered a ghostly shadow play./Trees spoke to me/of the speed of perception/and of everything/that lies within the possibilities/of angular occurrence. ~Belinda Subraman 

Bengt's voice and art appear in GAS 2, located below.