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Midnight Verbs
$18About the Book
“What used to be borders is now you,” writes Marko Pogačar in this beautiful, inimitable
collection of poems, giving us a world of post-war Yugoslavia where “TV shows start with
familiar scenes.” What is the poet to do in this world? The poet demands the “green skull of
an apple.” It is a world where eggs chirp, newspapers rustle, and the dead are near. What is it,
this syntax of seeing one's country with full honesty, without any lyric filters? How does it
become so dazzlingly lyrical, nevertheless? “I dislike walking on a person's left side,” the
poet admits. “I shove the night into an evil e-mail / and send it to the entire nation.” And
behind him we see the world, “beautiful, like a burning guillotine.” It is blessed, this
strangeness of abandon, after all is lost. And yet, not all is lost. What is happening here? Real
poetry is happening. Lyric fire. I know it when instead of writing a comment on the book, I
just want to keep quoting. For poetry is a mystery that is communicated before it is
understood. Marko Pogačar is the real thing, and I am especially grateful to Andrea Jurjević
for these crisp, beautiful translations.
—Ilya Kaminsky
History is a constant and defining character in poetry where the most memorable lines
brilliantly combine dark, dry humor with a direct treatment of the physical. There we
discover a mad desire for laughter. For reckoning with rules. With borders. With God. Marko
Pogačar is a poet of expressive power and specificity. Almost every poem is intense and
scandalous, dejected and intelligent, or a poetic whirlwind of all of the above that’s not to be
messed with.
—Claudiu Komartin
Pogačar's poetry is original, layered, equivocal, and rich in references. Like Brodsky, Pogačar
turns to history, but his associations are more reminiscent of John Ashbery and the delightful
strangeness of Tomaž Šalamun.
—Martín López-VegaMarko Pogačar crafts rich, lush poems in a more consistent and refreshing manner than other
poets. His poetry is filled with images that are tough to visualize. His use of language is
rarely referential; it's more in the service of creating linguistic realities, those that exist only in words. Pogačar seems to be constantly testing the ability of language to create worlds.
— Irena Matijašević -
The Compass Bird
$15About the Book
Observant and meditative, lit with gentle whimsy, Siddhartha Menon’s work on the animal world leads us from ornithology to ontology, detail to dazzling insight, in a wingbeat. Here is a book in which the reverie of snails, the ‘mynahness’ of mynahs, the unhurried gaze of nilgai, becomes a way to reflect on all the eternal questions—time, belonging, love, purpose, a world ‘stained with stillness’, in which ‘those who attend have the last word’. One of the most delightful new books of poetry I have read this year.
– Arundhathi Subramaniam
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All That I Wanna Do (Marathi)
$16About the Book
Dear Sanjeev,
I read your poem yesterday ( last evening). Globalisation, and the consequent private Americanisation, corporatisation, computers, mobiles, mall culture and the decline of humanity
in every aspect of life is your concern, and mine too. That you and I have felt that comes with this new kind of life, and the regret that we feel because we cannot deter this decline or escape from it, the sarcastic presentation of the never-ending story of our contemporary miseries appear in your in the poem one after another; and interestingly (your) style neither accepts any poetic form nor it is written in any poetic language, and just as you were exhausted while carving a new definition of poetry, I was exhausted while reading your poem – this is what precisely I want to tell you by writing this exhausting second sentence. What you have expressed in this poem is the philosophy of this new way of life. Of course, I think it's significant that while presenting this philosophy afresh, you haven’t pretended that you are a philosopher!
Yours
Hemant Divate
August 28, 2004 -
All that I Wanna Do (English)
$16About Book
Dear Sanjeev
I read your poem yesterday ( last evening). Globalisation, and the consequent private Americanisation, corporatisation, computers, mobiles, mall culture and the decline of humanity in every aspect of life is your concern, and mine too.
That you and I have felt that comes with this new kind of life, and the regret that we feel because we cannot deter this decline or escape from it, the sarcastic presentation of the never-ending story of our contemporary miseries appear in your in the poem one after another; and interestingly (your) style neither accepts any poetic form nor it is written in any poetic language, and just as you were exhausted while carving a new definition of poetry, I was exhausted while reading your poem – this is what precisely I want to tell you by writing this exhausting second sentence.
What you have expressed in this poem is the philosophy of this new way of life.
Of course, I think it’s significant that while presenting this philosophy afresh, you haven’t pretended that you are a philosopher!
Yours
Hemant Divate
August 28, 2004
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Forty Five Shades of Brown
$16About the Book
Babitha Marina Justin’s poems, woven around self, nature, and body, have an organic architecture, gothic or temple-like, with metaphors working like sculpted images or murals around a central experience. They are honest, at times confessional, often with memories from childhood and adolescence for their raw materials; but they do not shy away from natural calamities and existential crises. Babitha's poems are at once deeply Indian and instinctively feminine in their deployment of images and the organization of experiences.
– K SatchidanandanBabitha Marina Justin has a distinct voice that is passionately lyrical and personal to the point of abandon, and in these COVID times, poetry too has also taken a Corona-Shaped turn. Her world is not only herself, but her neighbourhood, and the larger country which she peppers with a persistent historical awareness, of the Muziris and the Jews. She celebrates their joys and mourns the murky, screaming out the lurking fury in her unique verses.
– Sivakami Velliangiri -
Unmappable Moves
$20About the Book
Reading Unmappable Moves, I had the strangest sensation of time expanding and closing in. These are taut, enigmatic poems—lightning flashes with bright, insistent heartbeats.—TISHANI DOSHILethal tales of sex and death that left me pining for more of Sampurna Chattarji’s mysterious lyric inventions.—JEET THAYIL
