Remembering Tomaž Šalamun

The "Literature and Real Literary Community," Real Pants, hosts a very special tribute to Tomaž Šalamun. The feature, which went live this week, includes a recording of Šalamun reading at the University of Massachusetts in 2003, recorded by Eric Baus. The recording is being made public for the first time. From Real Pants:

The great poet Tomaž Šalamun passed away on Dec. 27 in Ljubljana. As we know from his poem “History,” Šalamun was “a sphere rushing through the air.” As we know from his poem “The Tree of Life,” Šalamun was “born in a wheat field snapping [his] fingers.” He was an impossible gift to poetry. His work transcends camps or labels: it is strange, sincere, funny, tragic, large, true, and unmistakable. It is singular. As the news of his death spread, his readers forwarded each other favorite poems, recordings of Šalamun reading, scans of photographs. We walked to our bookshelves and pulled out his books, arranging them around us like magical perimeters of words. Over the past week and a half, as I reread his poems, almost every one seemed to hold an epitaph within. “God is my/reader.” “Do you hear grief through the language?” “Stars will fall on your head.” This is not to suggest that his poetry is morbid. It is, in fact, full of a spirited enthusiasm that feels trustworthy precisely for its ability to embrace the tragic as well as the ecstatic.

Šalamun’s work transcended cultural, stylistic, and political borders. His influence on generations of poets in Slovenia, America and elsewhere has been massive. Those who were lucky enough to hear him read his work aloud listened closely, and told others. There are several good videos and audio recordings of Šalamun reading available online. Some can be found here, here, and here. As part of this tribute to Šalamun and his work, we are glad to make public for the first time a very special recording of him reading at the University of Massachusetts’s Memorial Hall in 2003, recorded by Eric Baus (please go immediately to Laura Solomon’s section of this tribute to listen).

We can look forward to many more words both by and about Tomaž Šalamun over the coming years. Many of his thirty-nine books of poems have not yet been published in English translations, and his current US publisher, Black Ocean Press, has already stated its commitment to continue publishing new translations of his work. [...]

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