Soy Realidad: Poems

by Tomaz Salamun, Michael Thomas Taren (Editor), Michael Thomas Taren (Translator), Tomaz Salamun (Translator)

Overview

At last available in English translation, "Soy Realidad" is Tomaž Šalamun's twenty-first collection of poetry, originally published in 1985. Showing a maturing poet at home as a citizen of the world, "Soy Realidad" ranges far from Šalamun's Slovenia, combining his native language with Latin, French, English, and Spanish, as well as evoking such places as Belize, the Sierra Nevada, and Mexico City. From sex to God, from landscape to literature, Šalamun's poetry is as ever a restless and witty inquisitor, peeling back the layers of the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781628970883
Publisher:	Dalkey Archive Press
Publication date:	09/16/2014
Series:	Slovenian Literature Series
Pages:	105
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

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."

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."

Editorial Reviews

09/01/2014
Salamun (On the Tracks of Wild Game) commands a tremendous dance along the border of reality and absurdity in this new translation of his 1985 collection. His atmospheres feel real and almost lived-in, constructed pinch-by-pinch through the incorporation of foods, languages, war scenes, and religious ritual—signs of history and culture with a cosmopolitan air; rooted in post-WWII Europe, but reaching beyond it. However, Salamun enlivens his sturdy settings with elements of the fantastical or surreal, elevating the work above what could otherwise read as a fragmented memoir. For example, in "Poppy," Salamun builds on stark hardship before making an unexpected twist: "Cover the people when I step in the area. /Throw on them blankets, tents, and powdered milk./ Dig them into the earth, I am a hamster." Or "Sierra Nevada," where Salamun presents the bizarre image of "father, the one who puts his body hair in their/ mouths, so that they can swallow thin, polished hits of pool balls." Salamun's interplay between the actual and the invented results in a graceful synthesis of the traditional and the contemporary. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"Salamun's poetry is not so much a response to particular experiences, no matter how socially transgressive they may be, but is experience itself." — Andrei Codrescu

Dalkey Archive Press

From the Publisher

Salamun's poetry is not so much a response to particular experiences, no matter how socially transgressive they may be, but is experience itself.

Andrei Codrescu

11/15/2014
A frequent presence at American universities, Slovenian poet Šalamun figures largely in postwar European literature, with over 30 books to his name. Many appear in English, with this latest seeing the light after being published in 1985. Šalamun has an enviable bouncy energy throughout, managing to be at once droll and profound: "in the year of our Lord three,/ while cooking chicken as per Metka's/ instructions,/ …I watch the sunset and tell/ myself: I know,/ the sun is in my chest." About the title: several poems are in Spanish or reference Mexico.

Library Journal