A Ballad for Metka Krasovec

by Tomaz Salamun

Overview

Poetry. Tomaz Salamun is perhaps the most popular and prolific poet in Central Europe today. Thanks to the translation of his work he has also been widely acclaimed abroad. To date he has had four collections of selected poetry published in English. A BALLAD FOR METKA KRASOVEC, originally published in the 1980s by Harcourt, at the mid-point of Salamun's career, is considered by the author to be one of his finest works. The volume is characterized by often striking imagery and sexual turmoil. It is the first complete single volume of his to appear in English translation. The translator is Michael Biggins, who is a Slavic and East European Studies librarian at the University of Washington Libraries in Seattle. SPD also carries Salamun's FOUR QUESTIONS OF MELANCHOLY (White Pine).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9788086264127
Publisher:	Twisted Spoon Press
Publication date:	07/03/2001
Series:	Contemporary Writing from Central Europe Series
Pages:	100
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Tomaz Salamun was born in 1941 in Zagreb, Croatia, and raised in Koper, Slovenia. He has published thirty collections of poetry in his home country and has received many prizes and fellowships at home and in the U.S., including a Fulbright and Pushcart Prize. As a young poet Salamun edited Perspektive, a progressive cultural and political journal. Communist authorities eventually banned the journal's publication, and arrested Salamun. His first two books, POKER (1966) and The Purpose of the Cloak (1968), were released in samizdat. Salamun has won the praise of many poets, including James Tate, Robert Creeley, Robert Hass, who celebrates his "love of the poetics of rebellion," and Jorie Graham, who calls his work "one of Europe's great philosophical wonders."

What People are Saying About This

Christopher Merrill

Tomaz Salamun is one of the most influential voices now speaking to younger American poets.

Editorial Reviews

"...this unexpected collection from a Czech small press destroys previous notions about Salamun and should win every translation prize available. ... some of the most amazing poems I have read in a long time."
—September/October 2001

Bloomsbury Review

Quiet yet also strangely exuberant, Salamun's lyrics are invigorated with the dissonance of outburst and metaphysical reflection, fusing public utterance and interior meditation in a way rarely seen in a poetic culture so consumed by a now-hackneyed "post-Postmodernism.
— Boston Book Review

Paquin

Like Dostoevsky, for whom consciousness was disease and salvation, Salamun celebrates art as both punishment and transcendence. Poetic vision assaults whoever would escape vital living . . . Imagining Salamun's wives and lovers, male and female, Ballad conflates and celebrates unrestricted art and love.
— World Literature Today

Michele Levy

Salamun¹s poetry is not so much a response to particular experiences, ... but is experience itself. ( Verse, v. 18, # 2 & 3)

[E]legantly laid out, striking cover designs, understated yet attractive fonts, concrete links between visual style and verbal content: all hinting at Tomaz Salamun's background as a conceptual artist. And much of his work is pictorial: relying as often on metaphor and imagery as on the staccato declarative tone which often characterises his work.

Poetry Wales

"Let various Marxists and the herd still/ shuffling outside my door gnash their/ teeth, but I'm living/ now. All I/ do is slightly/ rearrange the struggle for the seed flowing/ in the universe." Originally published in his native Slovenian in 1981and just in time for May Day nowthis heartbreakingly wry set of verse letters from the poet to his wife, Metka Krasovec, and their circle finds the poet globetrotting from behind the iron curtain, an "awesome salesman from the least./ (I meant to write from the east/ but mistyped.)." In over 100 short missivessome written at Yaddothe poet elegizes Mayakovsky (dead at 37, the poet's age) and Mandelstam; wonders "Are you eating enough meat?"; and decides, with a smile, "I'd like to die with a red cap on my head." Psychic complexities ("suffering joins fear and disgust") and sexual longings complicate his travels further. All four of the other Salamun collections available in the U.S. are selections from among his 30 or so books; this midcareer volume is the first to be translated and published in toto. Aside from being wonderful poetrythe translations by University of Washington Slavic and East European studies librarian Michael Biggins have tremendous energy and easethe book gives immediate and fascinating insight (and hindsight) into the paradoxes of the cold war writer's life in the East: "I'm here./ My hands shine./ America is my fate." (May 1) Forecast: Based in Prague, 10-year publishing veteran Twisted Spoon (www.twistedspoon.com) maintains a series of English-language expatriate writers; another of Czech-based "Bohemicus" writers; a beautifully produced Kafka series; and "Contemporary Writing from Central Europe"of which this lovely paper-with-flaps edition is part. Salamun already has a large following in the U.S.; this book need only reach his readers for it to become their favorite. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

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