Instead of Whom Does the Flower Bloom

Vlado Kreslin will be a revelation to North American readers. His poems seem at one and the same time postmodern and pre-modern. They evoke the lost world of a resilient people in a language that resonates in its plain-spokenness with the losses that all thoughtful people in a globalized economy confront. Don’t let the ostensibly un-ironic, even folksy language fool you--his poems slyly combine simplicity of means with complexity of effect, a combination only an artist of great sophistication can pull off. Urska Charney’s translations honor both aspects of Kreslin’s style. Kreslin is lucky to have found such a sensitive and canny translator. And so are we.