Feast: Poems

To read Tomaž Šalamun is to understand the delights of contemporary poetry. He is one of the major names in the international avant-garde. Irreverent, self-mythologizing, tragic, and visionary, he is a poet of immense range and cunning, able to encompass everything from Balkan wars and politics to the most intimate personal experiences. Feast, his latest collection in English, brings together both early and more recent work. "Realism, surrealism, song. Aphorisms, lyric, anti-lyric," as Jorie Graham wrote, are all to be found in these poems. Here is the most blasphemous of poets who is also a great religious poet. "Throw open a window, pull up a chair, and enjoy the imaginative feast" (Edward Hirsch).