Publisher's Synopsis
Edited by Charles Simic with an introduction by Robert Hass.
Various translators, including Charles Simic and Anselm Hollo
Tomaz Salamun was born in Zagreb in 1941, took a degree in art history from the University of Ljubljana in 1965, and in the early 1970s began visiting the USA where he has lived until recently. A prize-winning poet in his own country, Salamun has steadily built an international reputation for the "complex sanity of limits" (Robert Creeley) expressed in his anarchic wit. This selection, which represents work from the earliest publications to those of the late 1980s, is his first UK publication.
"Salamun's poems reel, pinch, jerk, smack and generally kick up their heels. They are comic, worldly, political and blasphemous. In short, they are fully alive, contemporary and successfully translated into English. This is a spirited poet with a vision very much of his own. As he says, 'I was born in a wheatfield snapping my fingers.' Readers will be snapping their fingers too." - James Tate
"There is a convincing power in the language and imagery." - Fleur Adcock, PBS Bulletin
