From Publishers Weekly
For American-born Agee, now a teacher and journalist in Belfast, the height of postmodern sensibility is the West's passive response to televised Serbian war crimes, a sentiment echoed by poet Ferida Durakovic: "I declare?this is not the calm and distant face of History/ And a little pool of blood." This anthology of Bosnian poets?defined in Agee's introduction as those committed to multi-ethnic democracy?is the first available in the U.S., and includes searing prose accounts of Serbian-run death camps. But the stance of most poets found here is to find refuge from war in anecdote and imagination. As the journalist and poet Semezdin Mehmedinovic?the most satisfying writer in the collection?observes: "Everyone in Sarajevo, accustomed to death, lives through so many transcendental experiences that they have already become initiates of some deviant form of Buddhism." Here, life under siege combines a sense of doom with an absurd inner freedom. Often, as in the confident and expressive poetry of Marko Vesovic, life and death undergo difficult and intricate inversions: "It's not a thirst shooting up,/ But a growth toward the dead, spread sideways," he writes of a white hawthorn tree. The collection as a whole is of uneven quality, and the number of extravagant lines ("AS I PASS THE SO-CALLED STREETS BY THE SO-CALLED BUILDINGS/ OF OUR SO-CALLED CITY") seem at times strangely clubby and arrogant, especially when the editor juxtaposes concentration camp narratives with travel logs of foreign-born writers. Still, as Faruhdin Zilkic writes of the mark left by a passing bullet, "it's when a year later/ you recognize the scar on the stone/ where your life went on again" that survival can become poetry, and this collection lets us give thanks to its power and joy. (Dec.) FYI: Also in December, City Lights will release Semezdin Mehmedinovic's full-length U.S. debut, Sarajevo Blues ($12.95 128p ISBN 0-87286-345-X). The same month, the prolific Sarajevan poet Mario Susko's second U.S. release, Versus Exsul, is due from Yuganta (6 Rushmore Circle, Stamford, Conn. 06905, $12.95 128p ISBN 0-938999-12-5).
| LoC Classification |
PG1417.B6S28 1998 |
| Dewey |
891.8/21608 |
| Nationality |
Bosnia |
| Cover Price |
$22.95 |
| No. of Pages |
208 |
| Height x Width |
8.3
x
5.1
inch |
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Translated from Bosnian.
Scar on the Stone is the first anthology of Bosnian poetry in English to have appeared since the outbreak of war and genocide following the independence of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992. It brings together fourteen of the country's most distinguished poets, chosen on the basis of artistic merit alone, but drawn from all creeds - Muslim, Orthodox, Catholic - and none, and from all three jurisdictions of the new federation.
Hamdija Demirovic
Hamdija Demirovic was born in Sarajevo in 1953 and lived in Belgrade between 1985-1992 when he emigrated to the Netherlands. He is the author of three collections of poetry and has been a major influence on the younger generation of Bosnian poets. A selection of his early work, Twenty-five Poems, translated by Charles Causley, was published in English in 1980. He is a distinguished translator of poetry from English, notably volumes of Pound and Whitman
Ferida Durakovic
Ferida Durakovic was born in Olovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1957. Her first book of poems was published while studying at Sarajevo University and she is the author of three subsequent volumes. Her most recent collection, Heart of Darkness (1998) has been translated into English. She is Secretary-General of the PEN Centre of Bosnia-Herzegovina and lives in Sarajevo where she remained throughout the siege.
Aleksandar Hemon
Aleksandar Hemon was born in Sarajevo in 1964. He travelled to Chicago in 1992 intending to stay only a few months, but remained there when Sarajevo came under siege. He began writing in English in 1995; his collection of short stories The Question of Bruno (2001) has received considerable critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. He continues to live in Chicago with his wife.
Alma Lazarevska
Alma Lazarevska was born in Velesu, Macedonia in 1957 but moved at an early age to Sarajevo where she still lives and works. Her volume of short stories Smrt u muzeju moderne umjetnosti (Death in the Museum of Modern Art, 1996), has been called one of the finest works to have emerged from the tragedy of the siege of Sarajevo.
Semezdin Mehmedinovic,
Semezdin Mehmedinovic was born in Kiseljak in 1960 and has written four books, among them the acclaimed poetry collection, Sarajevo Blues (1998). He has worked as a script-writer, journalist, poet and editor and was founder of the journal Fantom Slobode (Phantom of Liberty). In 1996 he and his family went to the US as political refugees and he now lives and works in Washington, D.C.
Marko Vesovic
Marko Vesovic was born in Pape, Montenegro in 1945 and has lived in Sarajevo since the sixties. One of Bosnia's most respected writers, he is the author of four collections of poetry and a novel. Also highly distinguished as a critic and essayist, and an influential opponent of Serb nationalism, his articles in the journal Slobodna Bosna (Free Bosnia) appeared to much acclaim throughout the siege.
Chris Agee
is an American poet living in Belfast. He is editor of Scar On the Stone: Contemporary Poetry from Bosnia (Bloodaxe Books 1998) the pre-eminent anthology of Bosnian poetry in English translation. A collection of essays, Journey To Bosnia, is forthcoming.
