This volume appropriates the allegorical style and metrical standards of the old dainas , or Latvian folk songs, giving the verse a timeless mythological quality that intends to evoke an archetypal community living in harmony with itself, with nature and with its gods. Unfortunately, Ziedonis addresses his basic themes--birth, death, love, spirituality--with a kind of naive simplicity. These poems long for some sublime musical accompaniment to elevate the banal sentiments of the verse: "Latvia, O chock-full and sweet sister, / O butter churn / bursting at the seams, / your chin dripping cream." Admittedly, the poet frequently conveys the rustic communality of farming with a charmingly amusing air, yet he just as often annoys the reader with repetitious language and Zen-like platitudes about the intuitiveness of nature. Ziedonis's prose poems, called "Epiphanies," are for the most part equally trite. Perhaps a portion of the blame belongs to the translator, who explains that he is unable to either read or speak Latvian and worked from literal translations, "trying to feel the meaning" of the poems.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
The Air Is Palpable
Among One's Own
And Night Attends Me
And Though I've Been Brazen
And While A Wee Brown Calf
Another Idiot Evening
At Maruza's
At Maruza's
At Maruza's Again
Autumn Leaves In Latvia
Bilberries Blueing
Blues
Butterflies
By The Roadside
Catch A Neutral Apple
The Chain
Clouds
Earth Mother
Enfold Me, Ink Fish
Ephiphany 3
Epiphany 1
Epiphany 10
Epiphany 12
Epiphany 14
Epiphany 2
Epiphany 4
Epiphany 5
Epiphany 6
Epiphany 7
Epiphany 8
Epiphany 9
A Faith In Me
Families
Grandmother
Handlebars
Hard On Her Heels
A Honed Simplicity
I Could Stay Out Here For Years
I Love A Floating Apple
I Read Smoke Carefully
I Seem To Tease Annele
I Went Into The Field
It Was A Beautiful Summer
It's Good You Lie Afar
Kleptomania
Knit Long Stockings
Krisjanis Peters Was Just Born
Latvia, O Butter Churn
Marta, Dear Marta
Milk
Mother
Mother's The Essence
My Love Was So Mute
My Son, My Son
The Needle
Never So Enraptured
O, A Candle Burns
On Lush Summer Sundays
Pea Children
Pilgrim Stone
The Poem Began
Purity
The Single Sin Of Adams
Sister, I Unveil
Spring
This Is Her Cairn
This Morning
Though All Our Songs Are Sung
To Meet A Stone
The Topmost Twig
Tree
Trio
Trio
When I Was Still Small
The White Fairy Tale
Without Whirlwinds
Yearning As The Dove
Yes, She Was A Madonna
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®
See all Editorial Reviews
