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Woods and Chalices
by
Tomaž Šalamun,
Brian Henry (Goodreads Author), Henry
Inspired by Rimbaud and Ashbery, the Slovenian poet Tomaž Šalamun is now inspiring the younger generation of American poets—and Woods and Chalices will secure his place in the ranks of influential, experimental twenty-first-century writers. Šalamun’s strengths are on display here: innocence and obscenity, closely allied; a great historical reach; and questions, commands, a...more
Hardcover, 96 pages
Published
April 14th 2008
by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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Sep 26, 2007
Brian
rated it
5 of 5 stars
· (Review from the author)
Recommends it for:
anyone & everyone
Shelves:
my-books
I translated this with Šalamun.
1 like · like · see review
view all 3 comments
I wanted to decide that the emperor had no clothes and set this aside. The poems toy with meaning, with places, with pronouns, but there are few entry points for the reader. The rich sonics kept me going, wondering how such language could drive the English lines and at what remove from the Slovenian originals. Finally I started using old bus passes to mark favorites and waiting expectantly for the next break in the fog that would make me go "yeah." The yeah-poems aren't any more coherent than th...more
I like Salamun's poems in the same way that i like first-wave European free jazz--it is folly to pick and choose chunks of it to pay attention to because it is all of a piece and mostly too densely packed to allow for intricate strands to emerge. Periodically, moments of clarity arise and you glimpse the poet and amidst the surrealism and the history and the post-logical jumps, beauty winks at you and disappears back into the swirling chaos.
Salamun's style of poetry is a bit surrealist for my taste in general, but I adored this collection. Will definitely be purchasing to add to my library and reread. There are lots of surprising and striking juxtapositions that accrete to something more than the sum of the individual ideas or images.
I was really looking forward to these poems after giving Salamun five stars for his Selected Poems I read years ago. This book though just didn't have the same impact on me. A little flat and unremarkable, though there were several I was fond of.
These odd and fascinating poems are the proverbial riddle wrapped in an enigma. Maybe it's an effect of the translation, but this author's work can be downright cryptic. In a charming way.
As Salamun writes:
At low tide the footprints are blue
and I long for the sinkhole.
Show me what you wrote.
My poems are genitalia.
At low tide the footprints are blue
and I long for the sinkhole.
Show me what you wrote.
My poems are genitalia.
Brian Henry (of GR) translated this & recommended it. I am a fan of Salamun, so... (Got to bring him to my college many years ago to read. A terrific poet & person).
feel like cut-and-paste workshop poems. but better. these are poems that should not be held up as examples to young and/or still-forming poets.
Read it with this voice in your mind:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C67DYQ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C67DYQ...
Aug 31, 2012
Sarah Beth
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
readers of Ben Lerner and Dorothea Lasky
Shelves:
poetry
In history there are snails / and stepped on snails.
Neo-druidism.
Neo-druidism.
Apr 17, 2008
Philip
marked it as to-read
Amy King gives it a rave, so I wanna read it too.
May 02, 2013
neek
marked it as to-read
Feb 27, 2013
Aqueous
marked it as to-read
Aug 31, 2012
Jacob Wren
marked it as to-read
Aug 23, 2012
Felipe
marked it as to-read
Apr 23, 2012
Lauren
marked it as to-read
Apr 02, 2012
Hburke727
marked it as to-read
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Tomaž Šalamun is a Slovenian poet, who has had books translated into most of the European languages. He lives in Ljubljana and occasionally teaches in the USA. His recent books in English are The Book for My Brother, Row, and Woods and Chalices.
More about Tomaž Šalamun...
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