Publisher's Synopsis
"This first US publication of Knuts Skujenieks -- one of Latvia's foremost contemporary poets -- is the author's most important and widely-translated body of work. Convicted in 1962 of anti-Soviet sentiment, Skujenieks wrote these poems during seven years of imprisonment at a labor camp in Mordovia. Vivid and expressive, this collection overcomes the physical experience of confinement in order to assert a limitless creative freedom. A Love Poem I would like clarity. To exclude A relationship's tangled yarn. Not a word. Let reaction suffice. So. Only so. And if the two of us Are pitched alone against the world, That we can instantly swing about From face-to-face And stand back to back. Would that be too much? But a poem cannot be written If one awaits the bullet From the back, And not from the front. Knuts Skujenieks was born in 1936 in Latvia, where he studied philology and history at the University of Latvia. In 1962, he was convicted
