Ana Božičević Weighs In On Croatia

I asked Ana Božičević, a Croatian poet who's been living in America since she was nineteen, to weigh in on our blog. Ana's first book, Stars of the Night Commute, will be published by Tarpaulin Sky Press in Fall 2009. For poems and everything else, visit her at nightcommute.org.

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Hola. Let me start with a brief caveat: I moved to the U.S. from Croatia at age 19, and had for a long while, probably through the offices of overwork and an exclusive focus on my new environment/language (and some sort of don't-turn-back-Orpheus complex) lost much of my grasp of contemporary Croatian poetry. Only in the past couple of years, thanks to the wonders of internet bookstores and web mags, and an editorial project I worked on for an international spinoff of S. Young/J. Spahr's "Numbers Trouble," have I reconnected with Croatian poetry and poets. Some knowledge was inevitably lost in the gap.

So here's my two cents, which on the other side of the coin might be two kunas, or euros -- you pick.

Your brief historical/linguistic overview of Croatia on the blog is quite sufficient for these purposes. The two things to 'get' in respect to Croatia is how much social/national turmoil it has been subjected to, well, always, and how inevitably this has reflected on its poets' national and linguistic identities -- which were often shaped by reactionary instincts. Still, there's a great deal of variety in Croatian poetry -- from vernacular poems of daily life and witness, to the (neo)avantgarde, postmodern, language, and surrealist poetries... all loose labels you're free to peel off as soon as they bore. Check Poetry International Web here and here for more on the history of modern Croatian poetry from wiser folk. http://croatia.poetryinternationalweb.org and the Croatian section of Transcript magazine offer a great supplementary array of poets and poems for anyone interested in exploring beyond the NEP anthology (a word of warning though -- the translations are uneven). The Croatian language, like the other languages of the region, is notoriously "difficult" (remember "Clinton deploys vowels to Bosnia"? {Ed: Yes!}), but I don't think this is anything a good translator would be phased by.

Igor Štiks's selections are very representative of contemporary Cro Po -- on the mark. Any omissions can realistically be blamed on a lack of space. I was surprised, though, not to see Dorta Jagić in this anthology. That's a little bit like excluding, say, Matthea Harvey from an anthology of new American poets. She's an extraordinary poet and my frustration with her unavailability in English has finally driven me to begin translating her. Look for her at a friendly magazine near you, sometime soon. The not-sufficiently-spoken secret of Croatian poetry today is the immensely vital mini-renaissance of women poets who are taking Croatian poetry in very necessary directions. To quote Darija Žilić, a wonderful poet and critic (doubtlessly better qualified to answer these questions -- Darija? -- her latest book of critical essays is "Writing in Milk"), who says, in response to Rade Jarak's question "Has the poetry written by women brought a new sensitivity, in the form of literary experience, to our everyday lives?":

"You put that very well – the need for a new “sensitivity.” Recently, Kemo Mujičić Artnam made an interesting comment in the magazine Tema. As he read an anthology of poetry from the former Yugoslavia in the Sarajevo Notebooks, he noticed that 70% of the poems spoke about blood, knife, nationhood. That tells us all we need to know about the current zeitgeist. I think women authors much more significantly undermine the national(ist) discourse, they are more sensitive to “difference,” and the themes they investigate are closer to the everyday – generally, they don’t crow about the spirit of the nation, writing instead about the body, motherhood, etc." (from Knjigomat)

She also points out that contemporary Croatian women poets "avoid politics, preferring to write about their “I” and about a somewhat autistic dream-world." This "dreamworld," the direct opposite of the dialectic of war, "blood, knife, and nationhood" -- the poetics of a different kind of witness -- speaks very much to "gurlesque" as discussed by Arielle Greenberg, Lara Glenum, and others. And contemporary Croatian women poets (more names, in addition to the above and the anthology: Aida Bagić, Vesna Biga, Olja Savičević Ivančević, Jasenka Kodrnja, Ljuba Lozančić, Sonja Manojlović, Irena Matijašević, Sibila Petlevski and many more!) as well as the male poets willing to transcend the above dialectic (see the NEP anthology) are, in my view, the key to making Croatian poetry new, newly Croatian, Croatian and universal in new ways. The selection in NEP is reflective, for me, of this hope. That I focus more on the women poets here is incidental to my interests and research and -- well, someone has to focus on them. They're so worth it. I'd love to see an anthology of New European Women Poets Who Kick Ass; I volunteer to translate all of the above for its pages.
Since I'm not viewing these poets, or Croatian and American poetry, from inside Croatia (except my inner Croatia), I fear that my answers to your last few questions would be inaccurate. Let's leave them below, though, and I'll invite some wise Croats to contribute to the comments section, if that's acceptable. A glimpse at the latest issues of the Croatian journal Poezija (Poetry) tells me that Croatian readers have been reading Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kim Addonzio, June Jordan, Charles Bukowski (ah, Bukowski), Billy Collins and Anne Carson. A medley. And a lot of European poets to boot. The variety of nationalities and schools found in this one journal make it rather more interesting than many American poetry mags. Just saying.

Also, write to me and feel free to contradict me on any and all points above. I want/need to learn more about Croatian poetry too. Help.

Thanks for the opportunity to share with you! Happy reading,

Ana

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Additional Qs "Leftover" by Ana:

How are the poets in this anthology (Branko Males, Anka Zagar, Branko Cegec, Delimir Resicki, Kresimir Bagic, Damir Sodan, Tatjana Gromaca) viewed in Croatia? Are these the most popular poets in Croatia? The most accessible to non-Croatian audiences?

Do you feel that Croatian poets are pressured (internally or externally) to write poems that are Croatian? Are poets concerned with being Croatian enough? Or, are poets concerned with seeming too Croatian? Is there pressure to write poems that are accessible to non-Croatian audiences?

What role does poetry play in the life of your average Croat? Are Croatian poets writing for "the masses?" Do Croatian poets feel compelled to write poems that are beneficial to "the people?"

Are there any American poets who are particularly popular among Croatian poets?