Poetry
Alateadvus on alatasa purjus
Not translated into English
Andres Ehin · 2000
Synopsis
More than five hundred poems from forty years, chosen by the author, many of them unpublished and revised in the late nineties. Dream images, black humour, beasts and impossible things, an absurdity held with precision, and, alongside free-form pieces, haiku and more traditional verse. The poet says he seeks in them what, in himself, in others and in nature, escapes simple words: the inexplicable, the mysterious, the unique.
Context
The volume appeared in Tallinn in 2000 from Varrak, edited by Ly Seppel, five hundred and eighteen pages; in it the author brought together, he says, the lion's share of what he had written in forty years. For Arne Merilai, it is with this book that the poet emerges from the shadow of Ilmar Laaban and Artur Alliksaar and asserts himself as a sovereign creator. Later selections have reprinted part of it, in 2010 and in 2020.
Who it is for
A substantial volume of poems in Estonian, a few of which exist in English. It is worth knowing that one looks in it less for a sustained meaning than for encounters of images.
Prizes and reception
Regarded by the Estonian Literature Centre as its author's principal work; the collection earned him the national culture prize in 2001.