The Shape

by Dejan Stojanovic

Poetry in translation. Translated from Serbian by the Author.

Home of the Shape

We will go far away
To nowhere
To conquer
To fertilize
Until we become tired
Then we will stop
And there will be our home
 
Anti-Shape

The shape looks for its opposite
But the opposite hides

The shape feels it
But doesn’t see it

The opposite is its mother
That’s why she hides her face
 
Almighty Shape

One hand I extend into myself
The other toward others

Both are the extended
Hands of the Almighty Shape

My secret is simple
All secrets are simple
 
The Shape and a Smile

I recreate myself
That is my only power

In search of a smile—
A smile is light

I enjoy it when the world smiles
The more smiles, the warmer I am

I smile
Because others are cold too
 
The Shape and Warmth

Insufficient to himself only
By himself he warms others up

Searching for a smile
He avoids the spent shapes
 
The Shape’s Speech

Until the end of his journey
Movement will be his story

One of the stories is the light
Passing from story to story

He stops only
When he gets tired of them all
 
Father and Son

You ask how it is possible
To be your own father and son

You should seek answers
Although it is better to anticipate some
To be the light and dream
 
The Cloud and the Shape

The cloud is the first shape
He expands and compresses at the same time

He retorts his desire into the multitude
Smiling as he swallows himself up
 

Genres: Poetry

75 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2012

About the author

Dejan Stojanovic was born in Pec, Kosovo (the former Yugoslavia), in 1959. Although a lawyer by education, he has never practiced law and instead became a journalist. He is a poet, essayist, philosopher, former journalist, and businessman.

Books of poetry: Circling, The Sun Watches the Sun, The Sign and Its Children, The Shape, The Creator, Dance of Time, THE WORLD IN NOWHERENESS (A PENTALOGY) - [Ozar, The World and God, The World in Nowhereness, The World and Humans, The Home of Light]. The Hidden Light, Primordial Spark, Centuries and Steps.

Books of Essays: Creator and Creating, The New Man and the New World.

Anthology: Selected Serbian Plays.

Philosophy: Absolute.

In 1986, as a young writer, he was recognized among 200 writers at the Bor (former Yugoslavia) Literary Festival. He also received the prestigious Rastko Petrovic Award from the Society of Serbian Writers for his book of interviews with major European and American artists and writers.

In addition to poetry and prose, he has worked as a correspondent for the Serbian weekly magazine Pogledi (Views). His book of interviews from 1990 to 1992 in Europe and America, entitled Conversations, included interviews with several major American writers, including Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow, Charles Simic, and Steve Tesic.

He has been living in Chicago since 1990.

THEY SAID ABOUT THE WORLD IN NOWHERENESS

“(The World in Nowhereness offers) the joy of cognition due to discoveries worthy of the Nobel prize…”
— Milan Lukić

"When I got my hands on Dejan Stojanović's book The World in Nowhereness, I was amazed and read the book with great pleasure. I didn't even believe that there is someone today who could write such a long poem, an epic, as if I opened to read the Iliad, in our time. I recommend this book to all who are believers in poetry because faith in poetry is the same as faith in eternity and eternal life."
— Matija Bećković

“The World in Nowhereness is Dejan Stojanović’s utopian absolute book, a kind of a Mallarméan absolute. An absolute story, or an absolute book, according to Borges, is a desert-like book: sandy, grainily unforeseeable, and corpuscularly innumerable… It is simultaneously a vision and a chimera. Isn’t that precisely why we long for an absolute book? The World in Nowhereness by Dejan Stojanović is, in his way, an embodiment of that dream.”
— Srba Ignjatović

“I have always wondered, even about my poetic work, what a total poem is… Can the pentalogy by Dejan Stojanović be called a total poem, one that every poet of note has dreamed about since the time of Homer? I felt such impulses while reading The World in Nowhereness. This is an absolute poem, of an absolute system of thought that reaches across the totality of our civilizational legacies.”
— Duško Novaković

"Exactly 17 years ago, in the last year of the 20th century, I came across the work of Dejan Stojanović, and then I wrote a text from which I will extract a few sentences. “Dejan Stojanović, in the last two years, made a real feat, he published six books, except for one, all books of poetry.” This first five-book collection was published in the last year of the 20th century, and here we are now with the five-book collection in the XXI century, nearing the end of the second decade. And then I also wrote the following: “Stojanović is a poet who searches for the perfect poetic form because at the same time he searches for the absolute meaning of human existence.” Whether it was a hunch or not, there is the Pentalogy and there is that word, that concept – an absolute, an absolute book, an absolute poem that could be sensed even in that first pentalogy."
— Aleksandar Petrov (January 17, 2018)

"The World in Nowhereness is primarily the result of great literary ambition and faith in l

Reviews

[nie-da nie-siada · Rating 5 out of 5]

The five poetry collections by Dejan Stojanovic that I’ve read made me realise, and later confirm, that he is a master of his craft.

While they draw heavily from Christian mythos, they convey truly universal messages.

The language he uses is like honey to my ears, eyes, and soul.

And he translates his own works and for that he deserves praise and praise only.

Beautifully talks about the world’s “Master of the Craft” while also being one himself.