Row!

by Tomaž Šalamun, Joshua Beckman (Translator)

A volume of selected poems which appears in English in Arc's edition.

Genres: Poetry

144 pages, Paperback

First published May 26, 2006

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

[Troy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Judging from the reviews, it doesn't seem like this is Šalamun's best collection of poetry, which is good, because I don't love it. It's not bad, but it doesn't sing to me, and as another friend said about reading aloud a poet's work she didn't like, "It doesn't taste good in my mouth." The problem might be that I just finished reading Bachmann and am still reading Celan (I just got a new translation of one of his later collections, Fathomsuns) and both of their poetry is so amazing, shocking, and powerful, that most other poets, even great ones, wither in their dark cold stare.

Also, it's fun for me to pick up on a poet's tropes and obsessions. Šalamun is all about forces: both natural forces (fire, water), animals, his dick, sex, and gossip. But often it feels like little vignettes that add up to little. It's musical, but so far none of his poems have stayed with me; none of them made me want to run out and read them to someone else; none made me want to commit to memory. That said, I'm not done with this collection yet, nor am I done with the poet. It was good enough to throughly read, and good enough to give another collection from this poet another solid chance.