Vasko Popa was a Serbian poet born in 1922. He studied philosophy at Belgrade University, and at the universities of Bucharest, and Vienna. He was well-read in many subjects, including Alchemy and Serbian folklore. His poems often have the feel of primitive song, imbued with dream elements and folk symbolism. He learned from the Surealists, but surpassed them in depth of structure and in the deliberate cross-referencing and deep interconnectedness of his poems and their symbols and allusions. He wrote in sequences, and though each poem of his can stand alone, its real place is in the sequence, and each sequence is part of a greater organic whole. He didn’t just write poems: he produced a coordinated body of work. The danger in this enterprise would gave been obscurity, a semi-private code of cross referencing that would have discouraged entry into his work. Yet his poems are marvelously simple, open, and meaningful on a level that is direct, like folktale, or tribal song. Perhaps his greatest work is Earth Erect, which draws from Serbian history, and the life of Saint Sava, patron saint of Serbia. But I thought I’d choose from a volume called Raw Flesh, which takes as it’s foreground subject matter the here and now of the town of Vrsac, though its inhabitants cast longer shadows than normal. Wolf Eyes I like because of its quiet determination to be equal to whatever may come along, by drawing on deeper resources. It’s significant that Popa fought as a Partisan during World War 2, and was imprisoned for a while in Beckerek Prison.
(Wolf Eyes)