Ascending the stairs of poetry, Nikola Šop (1904 – 1982) went from the utterly material verses, via an elementary confessional poetry, the poetry of Christian and mystic symbolism, intimate meditations, to an extremely dematerialized poetry of cosmic regions. Going through these poetic stages, he proved, practically as well, that a poet’s physical position in relation to the world also essentially […]
An Invitation to Dear Jesus I’d be so happy if, oh Jesus, you would enter my dwelling deign. Where things quite common hang on the walls. Where day drops off early on the window pane. I would tell you of lighting A dim lamp to lengthen the short day. Of my very small life, serving rancorously with my brothers away. […]
Men are, typically, bad at telling colors apart. Still, it would have been hard to find someone as clueless in the matter of colors as my grandfather. His spectrum boiled down to four basic colors, and as for all the rest—either they did not exist or (if the old guy was in a good mood) they were reduced, in short […]
Jim Timony, my social worker, left for Nebraska to finish his doctorate, and so the whole of next week I did not have to do my obligatory script of contrition and blabbing such lies that no one in his right mind would swallow: “Have you ever beaten anyone?”, “Who? Me? Who do you think I am?” “Did your father beat […]
The story of the Bosnian bogomils, called “krstjani” (“christians”), has been oversimplified by those who see the period from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century as a glorious time in which the dualist church and state worked together and prospered. In fact, the krstjani efforts to replicate early Christianity and follow an apostolic path were often obstructed by churchmen and […]
She is here and she stands firmly You think: silently once she fell but she waits for you around the corner Like trout in the Vrbas like the Vrbas in its gorge like that gorge in the mountain Bosnia—always in her Bosnian ways Even today we need her Bogomil beliefs her Ku’ran her Pater Noster her King Tvrtko and some […]