Versus Exsul

Book by Susko, Mario

For American-born Agee, now a teacher and journalist in Belfast, the height of postmodern sensibility is the West's passive response to televised Serbian war crimes, a sentiment echoed by poet Ferida Durakovic: "I declare--this is not the calm and distant face of History/ And a little pool of blood." This anthology of Bosnian poets--defined in Agee's introduction as those committed to multi-ethnic democracy--is the first available in the U.S., and includes searing prose accounts of Serbian-run death camps. But the stance of most poets found here is to find refuge from war in anecdote and imagination. As the journalist and poet Semezdin Mehmedinovic--the most satisfying writer in the collection--observes: "Everyone in Sarajevo, accustomed to death, lives through so many transcendental experiences that they have already become initiates of some deviant form of Buddhism." Here, life under siege combines a sense of doom with an absurd inner freedom. Often, as in the confident and expressive poetry of Marko Vesovic, life and death undergo difficult and intricate inversions: "It's not a thirst shooting up,/ But a growth toward the dead, spread sideways," he writes of a white hawthorn tree. The collection as a whole is of uneven quality, and the number of extravagant lines ("AS I PASS THE SO-CALLED STREETS BY THE SO-CALLED BUILDINGS/ OF OUR SO-CALLED CITY") seem at times strangely clubby and arrogant, especially when the editor juxtaposes concentration camp narratives with travel logs of foreign-born writers. Still, as Faruhdin Zilkic writes of the mark left by a passing bullet, "it's when a year later/ you recognize the scar on the stone/ where your life went on again" that survival can become poetry, and this collection lets us give thanks to its power and joy. (Dec.) FYI: Also in December, City Lights will release Semezdin Mehmedinovic's full-length U.S. debut, Sarajevo Blues ($12.95 128p ISBN 0-87286-345-X). The same month, the prolific Sarajevan poet Mario Susko's second U.S. release, Versus Exsul, is due from Yuganta (6 Rushmore Circle, Stamford, Conn. 06905, $12.95 128p ISBN 0-938999-12-5).

Copyright 1998 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

When asked if he'd ever heard of Mario Susko, my Bosnian friend replied, "Professor Susko was an idol to his students at the University of Sarajevo, and if this is an overstatement, then he was the next closest thing." Maybe it is still an overstatement, but it is surely justified by Versus Exsul. Susko's second book of poems in English (following Mothers, Shoes, and Other Mortal Songs, Yuganta, 1995) is a recollection of a war experience, the cruelest kind of war that Susko relives and struggles to comprehend in his verse. The poems range from "mystically simplistic," where the act of war is not mentioned but always present, to "brutally outspoken," where every word depicts pain and anxiety. This collection is as beautiful and engaging as it is inventive and strong ("God is I know the greatest coward/ who masked that well with a man's fate"). A noteworthy addition to all poetry collections.AMirela Roncevic, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.