Dikter om ting och människor. Eller: (HT) + (TT) + (TH) + (HH)

This paper looks at four object-oriented poems from the Scandinavian 1960s: Klaus Rifbjerg’s Livet i badeværelset (Life in the bathroom), Olaf H. Hauge’s Ljåen (The scythe), as well as Benny Andersen’s En gammel kniv (An old knife) and Din kjole uden dig (Your dress without you). By departing from Ian Hodder’s definition of the entangled dependency between humans and things, formulated by the British archaeologist as a relationship in which humans depend on things (HT), things depend on other things (TT), things depend on humans (TH), humans depend on humans (HH), the analysis wishes to show how poetry written in an era of consumerism such as the 1960s can question the traditional hierarchy regulating the relationship between human “owner” and material object and challenge preconceived categorizations of living beings and inanimate matter, “us” versus “them”.