The Missing Links
Linder Sterling: “Apparently Elvis’s big sexual fantasy was to see pubic hair peeking out from a woman’s knickers”. * Hari Kunzru reviews Jonathan Franzen‘s Freedom. * 13 books nobody’s read? * The late Claude Chabrol‘s career in 10 videos. * A documentary on Ivor Cutler. * Rush hour, Waterloo Station, 1970. * Keith Pattison‘s pictures […]
Maintenant #27: Zvonko Karanović
The great zest and energy in writing that were conceived in me in the 80s went on simply by inertia into the 90s, but the topics I was dealing with changed. I was terribly striken by the emerging situation, collapse of the country, emigration of some friends. The original feeling of rage had withdrawn into this terrible feeling of frailty. My youthful fascinations were replaced by the thoughts of death, war and transience. I was caught by the crisis of my thirties, I felt claustrophobic and felt that life was elapsing ever-faster. That became a part of my writing. The poems became darker and more melancholy, I started writing politically engaged poetry. Maybe it was because of Bertolt Brecht and his anti fascist poems that I read in my youth, or maybe because of punk and Beat attitudes on truth as the leading ideal in art that were reminding me that I, as a poet, was obliged to go after the truth. The horror can be surpassed only by testifying about it.
In the 27th of the Maintenant series, SJ Fowler interviews the Serbian poet Zvonko Karanović.
Ten Poems
have you ever imagined yourself
as one of those women
whose eyes are the only spark of life
whose body is wrapped in
a grey casket of
balloon silk
if you have
then you should leave me
I notice
tall army boots
on the feet of girls who just
passed us by
no
we’re not going to the museum
I look for the bus that will take us
to the water bed
filled with champagne
crazy as astronauts
tragic as the heroes
of the civil war
By Zvonko Karanović.
3:AM Reloaded
What you (may have) missed on 3:AM this week: Fiction: ‘Frames’ by Julian Baker Flash fiction: ‘Sign Here’ by Eric Balaz Poetry: In the 26th of the Maintenant series, SJ Fowler interviews the Spanish poet Juan Andr és GarcÃa Román; ‘Four Poems’ by Juan Andr és GarcÃa Román; ‘Four Poems’ by Robert Bohm; ‘Two Poems’ […]