For all the past and
everything that exists,
bodies will receive
gravity,
hearts unrest,
and souls the anguish
that results from
memory’s feeble
power within
vigilant love for
alien consciousnesses,
until the ants
arrive
to deliver corpses
across the land.
Moss & Silver
Jure Detela
Translated by
Raymond Miller, Tatjana Jamnik
Iztok Osojnik, Contributor
May 2018
Jure Detela—poet, activist, and mystic—was a key figure in the vibrant avant-garde movement that defined Slovenian culture in the 1980s. The forty-four poems of Moss & Silver anticipate the radical environmentalism and animal rights activism of the 21st century while engaging in a passionate dialogue with wide array of poets from William Wordsworth to Kobayashi Issa. Although he often railed against the “defenders of Slovene [traditional poetic] beauty” and “the tyranny of metaphor,” Detela was a meticulous craftsman who employed a stunning variety of rhythms and stanzaic forms.
Moss & Silver (Mah in srebro), originally published in 1983 by Obzorja (Maribor), is the first book of Jure Detela’s poems to appear in English. This bilingual edition has been translated by Raymond Miller with Tatjana Jamnik, and includes an introduction by Slovenian poet and critic Iztok Osojnik and a translator’s afterword by Raymond Miller.
Cover artwork by Mina Fina. Cover letterpressed at UDP.
About the Author
Jure Detela was born in Ljubljana in 1951. Although he was an important figure in the tumultuous avant garde movement that dominated Slovene culture in the 1980s, he nevertheless stood somewhat apart from its main currents. Detela was a true renaissance man: as a thinker, he was in many ways far ahead of his time, anticipating Derrida, Žižek, and others in his environmentalist activism and consistent critique of anthropomorphism; as a poet, he was widely read, and conducted an ongoing dialogue in his verse with an astounding array of poets from many different traditions—from the Greek classics and Japanese haiku masters to the English and German Romantics and French Decadents (even Emily Dickinson is addressed in one of his poems). He was also an accomplished critic and art historian. Jure Detela died in Ljubljana in 1992, from complications resulting from a hunger strike against the Yugoslav regime in Belgrade.
Praise
Now I’m remembering why I love poetry. Inside these poems, dirt is clean—insect wings—a cold and bright-lit ringing sound—animals are not afraid—abrupt eternity—live forever, Jure Detela!
Cathy Wagner
t last, the voice of one of the most distinctive and influential Slovene poets of the late 20th century, Jure Detela, can be heard in English. Detela’s painterly eye and his gift for rendering visions of cosmic breadth may remind readers of Blake and Stevens, or of the boundless leaps of his compatriot and contemporary Tomaž Šalamun. Yet where a Šalamun poem is likely, at the last minute, to side-step, defuse, or subvert its own astral ambitions, Detela’s vision remains focused and coherent, just as the deep ecological strain that suffuses his poems is consistent and unrelenting. English-language readerships may find Detela’s work more compelling today than they would have during the poet’s brief lifetime.
Michael Biggins
Jure Detela’s deeply literary poems stand on the side of life in an era of unprecedented ecological and political disasters. His is a necessary ethical voice, an heir to his great exemplars, Issa and Wordsworth.
Edward Hirsch
About the Translators
Raymond Miller holds a doctorate in Slavic languages and literatures from Harvard University. He taught Russian language and literature at Bowdoin College, and has written on the history of Romanticism in East Central Europe, historical linguistics, and 19th century Russian literature. His translations include Jure Detela’s Moss & Silver (UDP). In addition to translating, Miller is a musician and songwriter. He was the president of the Society for Slovene Studies from 2013-2016.
Tatjana Jamnik is a Slovene translator, poet and essayist. She is the director of the cultural society KUD Polica Dubova. Among her many publications are Brez (a verse collection, 2009) and a translation of Stanislaw Lem’s novel Solaris (2010).
About the Contributors
Iztok Osojnik was born in 1951 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He is the author of twenty nine books of poetry, including Married to Red (2014) and Kosovel and Seven Dwarfs (2016). His poetry, fiction, and essays have been published in thirty languages. Poetry collections available in English include Mister Today (Jacaranda Press, 2004), New and Selected Poems(Sampark, 2013), and Elsewhere (Pig Hog Press, 2013). Wagner (Sampark) is forthcoming in Summer 2017. He was a Cambridge Seminar on Modern English Literature Fellow in 2000 and a Goethe Insitut Fellow in 2002.
In the News
Publication Details
ISBN: 978-1-937027-94-0
Trade Paperback
Smyth-sewn. 144 pp, 5.25 x 8 in
Publication Date: May 01 2018
Distribution: Asterism Books (US), Inpress Books (UK)
Series: Eastern European Poets Series #42