Woods and Chalices

by Tomaž Šalamun, Brian 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, and statements of identity that challenge all norms and yet seem uncannily familiar and right— “I’m molasses, don’t forget that.”
 
Coat of Arms

The wet sun stands on dark bricks.
Through the king’s mouth we see teeth.
He sews lips. The owl moves its head.
She’s tired, drowsy and black.
She doesn’t glow in gold like she’d have to.

Genres: Poetry

77 pages, Hardcover

First published April 14, 2008

About the author

Tomaž Šalamun was a Slovenian poet, who has had books translated into most of the European languages. He lived in Ljubljana and occasionally teaches in the USA. His recent books in English are The Book for My Brother, Row, and Woods and Chalices.

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I translated this with Šalamun.

[Aaron · Rating 2 out of 5]

When you're expecting a sonnet but really it's just 14 lines of surrealist non-sequiturs...

[Bill Tarlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 the arbitrary ones which surround them, but they have a consistent swell to them which speaks of deep feeling and less of concrete obscurity. There's a poem about a train ride at the end that strikes me as singularly psychedelic.
I won't name other favorites because if I go back to this in the future, I suspect I will find different pages to pause on. I was rushing a bit toward the end because after a while there's a sameness to private allusions and blank juxtaposition. The author says "penetrate don't outwit" at one point. That's a strategy, but a little bit more low hanging fruit would be a nice incentive.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Janée Baugher · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the former Yugoslavia, this man authored over 30 books. Lyrical collection of short, one-stanza poems, though readers will have to decide for themselves which craft elements they can appreciate.

[hh · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Melissa]

Amy King gives it a rave, so I wanna read it too.

[Jessica]

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).

[Timothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read it with this voice in your mind:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C67DYQ...

[Rauan · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[SmarterLilac · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.