Description
Poetry. Translated from the Slovene by Raymond Miller with Tatjana Jamnik. 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.
Author Bio
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.
Author City: Ljubljana SLV