Full Description
The poems in Smugglers move through rapid historical shifts and meditations on personal experience, exploring the depths and limits of comprehension through the people and geography of the Balkans. Ultimately, Ales Debeljak's urban imagination creates a mosaic-intimate and historical-of a vanished people and their country. Every poem in Smugglers is sixteen lines long-four quatrains, a common form for Debeljak. This structural regularity is reinforced by a commitment to visual balance, with each poem working as a kind of grid into which the poet pours memories and associative riffs. From "Bookstore": At least you are blessed. Winter's here. In darkness, awake since yesterday, I came to browse again through the titles of old books, wobbly skyscrapers, writers of my youth and stiffened honey. No opening hours on the door, a minor poet with no woman sits behind files in the front. I know him from when we all shouted in one loyal voice, collected works on sale for a handful of cents, read the holy Kapital like zealots. Well, okay: not exactly all. Some of us took another road ...Ales Debeljak's books have appeared in English, Japanese, German, Croatian, Serbian, Polish, Hungarian, Czech, Spanish, Slovak, Finnish, Lithuanian, and Italian translations.
He teaches in the department of Cultural Studies at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia. Brian Henry is the author of ten books of poetry and won the 2011 Best Translated Book Award. He teaches at University of Virginia in Richmond, Virginia.
Contents
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments 4
Here
Home 7
Yesterday a House, Today Nothing 8
Bookstore 9
Bocce Court 10
Graceful Arch 11
Botanical Garden 12
Under the Chestnuts 13
Turkish Restaurant 14
Empty Handed
Smugglers 16
Paperboy 17
Advice to a Young Poet 18
The Living and the Dead 19
On the Deck 20
Arrest Warrant 21
The Castle Avenue With Trees 22
The Tree of Love 23
In the Inner Circle
The Balkan Bridge 25
The Woman Who Isn't There 26
Once Upon a Time in America 27
Jazz Club 28
Presidential Palace 29
Anchor 30
Statue of Anti-Fascist Activist 31
Failed Encounter 32
Mandatory Exercises
A Fool or a Baker 34
Tightrope Walker 35
When You Get Out of Prison 36
Old Factory 37
Essential Equipment 38
Insomniacs Society 39
Holidays 40
Moskito Bar 41
On the Wrong Side
Under Your Window, Lili Novy 43
The Robba Fountain 44
Under the Basket 45
Speedway Racetrack 46
Schoolboy's Blues 47
Festival Hall 48
Lightbulb 49
James Joyce Slept Here 50
About the Author 51
About the Translator 52
