City of Ash

by Eugenijus Ališanka, H.L. Hix (Introduction)

Although the title of this sensitive collection refers to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, City of Ash serves as a universal geography of the contemporary soul in an urban context. Through his poetry, Eugenijus Alisanka searches for personal and historical meaning within the framework of time, recognizing both the demands of the self and the impossibility of avoiding what came before, whether human or cultural.

Genres: Poetry

62 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 2000

Reviews

[Esteban · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed it, it has several registers, the urban and introspective was the one I enjoyed the most, the epic one is what surprised me the most, while the word-driven surrealist did not surprised me at all, it seemed more like a fancy way of piling up sentences. Wish I had its Lithuanian version to check the rhymes and so on, but it is a good poetry book it has great verses, although it can be over-eloquent sometimes. It's a novelty to find contemporary authors and it is refreshing, especially coming from unexpected places as Lithuania.

[Gbeab · Rating 5 out of 5]

From a series out of NU press entitled Writings from an Unbound Europe, discovered on a lonesome night with Google searching for the impossible and the eloquent from language and naturally this puppy is translated from the Lithuanian into English.

Here's one:

autumn apocalypse


toward the silence of plains
of hard-frozen earth one beam bends,
the heavy light settles
slowly on the face
and between the bell and the night
consonance, created unexpectedly,
bears away dreams: right here,
where are scorching winds, where the returning
warrior bows to the reign of time,
a hand has opened doors to twilight,
an eye shatters the view
into the loneliness of things, but there is no heart,
only pulses, premonitions, and a step
beyond the rose traced by frost
on burning windows

[Rosemary]

this is not the book I am reading. it has the same title but the book I'm reading is by cassandra Clare