Poetry
Mūžīgais mākonis
Not translated into English
Linards Tauns · 1958
Synopsis
The city dominates this collection, both refuge and image of the lost country, and it voices nostalgia, the discreet feeling of not being at home, melancholy and unhappy love; in Nams, the poet says he will lay his palms on the cold stone when he has nothing else left to caress. Jānis Andrups nonetheless reads in him less a poet of the city than a singer of life with keen senses, and Jānis Grīns a strong sadness, but never a despairing one.
Context
The collection appears in Sweden in 1958. Jānis Rudzītis reviews it in Laiks on 31 December and sees in its author a kind of half-brother of the poet Gunars Saliņš, his friend from the New York circle of Elles ķēķis, more sensitive than he and remaining in the lyric; in Latvija, on 24 January 1959, Jānis Grīns praises a flawless expression but wishes for stronger motifs; Karola Dāle, a week later, speaks of an impressionist with a breath of eternity. Saliņš gathers his other poems posthumously in 1964 under the title Laulības ar pilsētu.
Who it is for
A brief lyric of the metropolis, to be read alongside the other Latvian poets of New York.
Prizes and reception
The only book by its author published in his lifetime, hailed in 1959 as the work of a new poet of the big cities.