Smugglers

by Ales Debeljak, Brian Henry (Translator)

Overview

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, Aleš 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 . . .

Aleš 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781938160677
Publisher:	BOA Editions, Ltd.
Publication date:	06/09/2015
Pages:	112
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Aleš Debeljak has published eight books of poetry and twelve books of essays in Slovenian. His books have appeared in English, Japanese, German, Croatian, Serbian, Polish, Hungarian, Czech, Spanish, Slovak, Finnish, Lithuanian, and Italian translation. Without Anesthesia: New and Selected Poems appeared from Persea Books in 2010. He has won the Preseren Foundation Prize, the Miriam Lindberg Israel Poetry for Peace Prize, the Chiqyu Poetry Prize in Japan, and the Jenko Prize. Debeljak teaches in the Department of Cultural Studies at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia.

Brian Henry is the author of ten books of poetry, most recently Brother No One (Salt Publishing, 2013). His translation of Tomaž Šalamun’s Woods and Chalices appeared from Harcourt in 2008, and his translation of Aleš Šteger’s The Book of Things appeared from BOA Editions in 2010 and won the 2011 Best Translated Book Award. He has received numerous awards for his poetry and translations, including fellowships from the NEA, the Howard Foundation, and the Slovenian Academy of Arts and Sciences. He lives in Richmond, VA.

Table of 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

Editorial Reviews

05/18/2015
Slovenian poet and critic Debeljak (Without Anesthesia: New and Selected Poems) examines isolation, reconstruction, and historical and cultural change in post-independence Slovenia. Set in various locations around his home city, Ljubljana, this series of tonally folksy, yet formally rigid, long-lined poems (each in four quatrains) echoes with the mingling of historical and personal intimacies that haunts the speaker at every turn: “hidden sins are public virtues/ and all conversations are recorded, microphones are in the wall,” he writes, “and the dark sheen of freedom: see you in the next war.” The book is distinctly historical, and thereby political, yet Debeljak’s insistence on formal consistency, humor, and adherence to his subject, along with translator Henry’s efforts at retaining his syntactical and cultural idiosyncrasies, put the personal, and traditional, experience of those historical events at the forefront of this collection. A troubled national history and the continuing traumas of a young nation may well strike readers as the heart of the collection: “your words sound sincere when they are least true,/ the shapes of orange explosions would deserve the attention/ that every developed nation devotes to its sages,/ new styles of reading and promises broken like jumps/ over flames.” Debeljak’s engaging, accessible, eye-opening poems turn cultural dislocation into its own strange pleasure. Bilingual edition. (June)

Publishers Weekly

"Debeljak’s insistence on formal consistency, humor, and adherence to his subject, along with translator Henry’s efforts at retaining his syntactical and cultural idiosyncrasies, put the personal, and traditional, experience of those historical events at the forefront of this collection. A troubled national history and the continuing traumas of a young nation may well strike readers as the heart of the collection."

—Publishers Weekly

“Aleš Debeljak’s Smugglers is the type of poetry book that, once the reader establishes a relationship with it, is difficult to lend out or give away. I suggest this because not every book of poems is immediately understood, not every book is instantly appreciated. But Smugglers has a quiet, dazzling nature to it that I find palpable. And so a reluctance to share it is an act to protect its artistry, as if to say, ‘You may read it if only you promise to attempt feeling what I feel.’ A selfish notion, sure, but this is one of those books that came along (for me) when needed. I recommend Smugglers without question. I just can’t quite let you see my copy.”

—Damon Marbut, The Rumpus

"The unique tone of the collection approaches prose diction, with lightning-like associative leaps characteristic of Debeljak’s use of poetic images....The lyrical voice intuitively summons it as a witness of the moments that link the poet’s childhood, adolescence, and adulthood to the present era....Nostalgia for a former life thus turns into nostalgia for all such persons, places, and situations that shaped the poet’s personal identity but also the anguish and trauma over a forever-changed people in the region....Although at first glance it may not seem so, this is perhaps one of Debeljak’s most intimate and exciting collections. The picturesque architecture of Ljubljana evokes the timeless beauty of baroque art and the poet’s attachment to it. At the same time, in the dark deserted interiors reside the ghosts of the past, a past that is unfortunately more powerful than the future."

—Bojana Stojanovic Pantovic, World Literature Today

“Clear images, conversational pacing, and declarative statements provide Smugglers with numerous entry points for a variety of readers. Each of the forty poems consists of four stanzas of four lines each. Such uniformity is undeniably pleasing in that it provides a sense of surety and orientation. It also provides an emotional cushion for the wild, imaginative project Debeljak is quietly at work on . . . Highly recommended!”

—Mid-America Review

From the Publisher