City of Ash

by Alisanka, Eugenijus; Hix, H. L.; Wachtel, Andrew; Hix, H. L.

• ISBN13: 9780810117846
• ISBN10: 0810117843
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-08-15
• Publisher: Northwestern Univ Pr

Summary

Although the city in 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, built on the fragments of the past. 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.

Lithuanian poetry is known for the melodiousness it achieves through rhyme and assonance, but Alisanka favors a more modern approach. His free verse, defying traditional capitalization and punctuation, may be read as a rebellion -- conscious or unconscious -- against the regulations imposed by the Language Commission in Lithuania, which regulates such matters. Alisanka's poems are neither surrealistic nor stream of consciousness but are, like cities themselves, concatenations of non sequiturs.

Table of Contents

Translator's Foreword	ix
dogs' breath steams, cold air catches in your throat	3	(1)
solstice	4	(1)
devoted walls stood there	5	(1)
autumn apocalypse	6	(1)
gloria mundi	7	(1)
who arose in our bodies	8	(1)
dream proserpina	9	(1)
the fall	10	(1)
antipygmalion	11	(1)
like the broken syllable of day	12	(1)
losing death	13	(1)
arrow	14	(1)
ecoutez	15	(1)
sand sphinx	16	(1)
dawn breaks: across your forehead	17	(1)
resurrected for those who do not exist	18	(1)
stairs of megara	19	(1)
alien home	20	(1)
morning in the land of visions	21	(1)
to the other side of blood	22	(1)
the one who stands	23	(1)
who will punish you when you return from the land	24	(1)
sub specie aeternitatis	25	(1)
the accent of time is over us	26	(1)
you leave already	27	(1)
when your warmth	28	(1)
ragged wing, diverting the current	29	(1)
while the day divides you stay	30	(1)
evening tracks	31	(1)
vox	32	(1)
water	33	(1)
necklace	34	(2)
the fog of castle roses	36	(2)
which key will absolve you of time?	38	(1)
pilgrim	39	(1)
pause	40	(1)
peripheral vision	41	(1)
tabula rasa	42	(1)
enchanted country	43	(1)
under the cupola of snow	44	(1)
atlantis	45	(1)
a votre sante	46	(1)
crystallography	47	(2)
crusade	49	(1)
dialogue in a cellar	50	(1)
north wind	51	(2)
two thousand years	53	(1)
the one who laughed at the dead	54	(1)
the heian court	55	(1)
front	56	(1)
civitas lunae	57	(5)
godspeed	62