Full Description
Finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize
An authoritative volume representing the vast oeuvre of one of the twentieth century's most brilliant and visionary poets.
Widely regarded as some of the most important and innovative poetry from postwar Europe, Tomaž Šalamun's work offers a singularly thrilling reading experience. Sharp and subtle, Šalamun's rhythms intertwine with an incantatory force; his prescient, liberatory politics and poetics pulse like a heartbeat. In Kiss the Eyes of Peace, the histories of Slovenia, the former Yugoslavia, and Europe are broken into kaleidoscopic harmonies of terror and joy: friends and family talk to each other under the sun as snow, apples, and deer mingle with blood and bones, with salt and cabbage, with gold, silk, and wine, and with God and heaven in the sand and grass.
"Love tore apart all my theories," writes Šalamun. His oracular poems, suffused with mystic pronouncements that confound and delight, are as moving as they are eerie. And yet, if "every true poet is a monster," Šalamun's profound imagination also offers us peace—grace, even—in the wildness and wilderness of his art: "May everything erupt on a clear day, just as it is, / into sacredness and the beauty of the gift: life."
Translated from the Slovenian and curated by esteemed author and translator Brian Henry, and with a Foreword from award-winning author Ilya Kaminsky, this expansive arrangement is the first of its kind to offer a comprehensive English-language retrospective of Šalamun's storied career.
Contents
Foreword by Ilya Kaminsky
Introduction by Brian Henry
Poker (1966)
The Purpose of a Cloak (1968)
Pilgrimage for Maruška (1971)
White Ithaka (1972)
Amerika (1972)
Arena (1973)
Falcon (1974)
Turbines (1975)
Imre (1975)
Druids (1975)
Feast (1976)
Stars (1977)
Angel's Method (1978)
The History of Light Is Orange (1979)
On the Tracks of Game (1979)
Masks (1980)
Ballad for Metka Krašovec (1981)
Analogies of Light (1982)
The Voice (1983)
Sonnet about Milk (1984)
Soy Realidad (1985)
Ljubljana Spring (1986)
The Measure of Time (1987)
Living Wound, Living Juice (1988)
The Child and the Deer (1990)
Ambergris (1995)
Black Swan (1997)
Book for My Brother (1997)
Sea (1999)
Woods and Chalices (2000)
Blackboards (2002)
From There (2003)
With Archilochus by the Cyclades (2004)
To sink in the nets under the olive trees (2004)
Sun's Chariot (2005)
Blue Tower (2007)
Njanja visits me out of nowhere like a fish (2008)
Deception (2008)
Cold Fairy Tales (2009)
Season (2010)
Robber (2010)
Opera Buffa (2011)
Andes (2012)
Michael is ours! (2012)
Breath (2013)
Mollusk (2013)
Fate (2013)
Babies (2014)
Orgies (2015)
The One Who Raises a Paw Is Asleep (2015)
And Everywhere There Was Snow (2021)
Appendix
Notes
Acknowledgments xxx
