The Junction
Selected Poems
Published on 23. October 2008
Book
Paperback/Softback
168 pages
978-1-85224-810-9 (ISBN)
Description
Lithuania's Tomas Venclova is one of Europe's greatest living poets. His work speaks with a moral depth exceptional in contemporary poetry. Venclova's poetry addresses the desolate landscape of the aftermath of totalitarianism, as well as the ethical constants that allow for hope and perseverance. "The Junction" brings together entirely new translations of his most recent work as well as a selection of poems from his 1997 volume "Winter Dialogue".
Reviews / Votes
Every major poet has an idiosyncratic inner landscape against which his voice sounds in his mind... [Venclova's] landscape is that of the Baltic in winter, a monochromatic setting dominated by damp and cloudy hues - the light of the skies condensed into darkness. -- Joseph Brodsky Venclova is a lyric poet of magisterial allure, committed to philosophical meditations... Part exile, part seer, he is the artist as witness and a living example of a literary elite that evolved in crisis yet remained true to the dictates of art. -- Eileen Battersby * The Irish Times * If in Venclova's volume, Winter Dialogue, there is a concern with endurance, and a search for absolutes in the face of adverse conditions both in Lithuania and in exile, in his most recent work, The Junction, we find the figure of a poet returning from exile, surveying what has occurred, what buildings still stand, and the fates of those one loved. And while these poems are filled with melancholy at the passage of time, there is also a sense of affirmation. For despite everything, each element that is salvaged constitutes a form of victory - a testimony to all that can be, and is, preserved from the vicissitudes of History. -- Ellen HinseyMore details
Edition
New
Language
English
Place of publication
Tyne and Wear
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 231 mm
Width: 154 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
320 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-85224-810-9 (9781852248109)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Tomas Venclova was born in 1937 in Klaipeda, Lithuania. After graduating from Vilnius University, he travelled in the Eastern Bloc, where he met and translated Anna Akhmatova and Boris Pasternak. Venclova took part in the Lithuanian and Soviet dissident movements, making friends with Natalia Gorbanevskaya and Lyudmila Alexeyeva and other members of the literary and human rights underground. He made his living by translating Baudelaire, Saint-John Perse, T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, W.H. Auden, Robert Frost, Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam and many others into Lithuanian. Venclova was one of the five founding members of the Lithuanian Helsinki Group. His activities led to a ban on publishing, exile and the stripping of his Soviet citizenship in 1977. Venclova is Emeritus Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Yale University where he taught from 1985. He has been the recipient of numerous prizes including the Vilenica 1990 International Literary Prize, the Lithuanian National Prize in 2000, the 2002 Prize of Two Nations, which he received jointly with Czeslaw Milosz, the 2005 Jotvingiai Prize, and the 2005 New Culture of New Europe Prize, and the 2023 Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Award. His works include volumes of poetry, essays, literary biography, conversations and works on Vilnius. His poetry has been translated into English in books including Winter Dialogue (Northwestern University Press, 1997), and two retrospective editions with no overlap between them, The Junction: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2008) and The Grove of the Eumenides: New & Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2025). Magnetic North: Conversations with Tomas Venclova by Ellen Hinsey was published by University of Rochester Press and Boydell & Brewer in 2017. After many years in New Haven, Connecticut, and a period spent in Krakow, he returned to Lithuania and now lives in Vilnius.
Content
Tomas Venclova: The Labours of Poetry: Between Classicism and Ruins by Ellen Hinsey 10
THE JUNCTION (2005)
New England Harbour 19
The Emigre 20
A New Postcard from the City of K. 22
Dunes at Watermill 25
Arrival in Atlantis 29
For an Older Poet 30
Two Apocrypha 32
The Junction 35
After the Lecture 37
Uzupis 41
Theseus Leaving Athens 42
On a Mountain Ridge Near Jordan 44
Discipline and Punish. A Visit to the Detention Centre IZ-45/1 48
From Landwehrkanal to Spree 50
Ormond Quay 53
Song of the Borderland 54
Homage to Shqiperia 56
Anno Domini 2002 58
La Baigneuse 60
On the Boulevard by Town Hall 62
A Valediction, Forbidding Mourning 63
Commentary 62
In the Lake Region 66
Limbo 67
He Who Turned Around at the Border 69
Antonio Vivaldi 71
Las Meninas 72
For R.K. 73
Landscape, Summer 2001 74
Verses for a Child's Birth 75
Pastoral 77
from WINTER DIALOGUE (1997)
A Poem About Memory 81
Winter Dialogue 82
'I was welcomed by twilight and cold' 85
To the Memory of a Poet. Variation 88
Nel Mezzo Del Cammin Di Nostra Vita 90
The Shield of Achilles 81
The Eleventh Canto 94
'We've been seized by the pull of the universe' 97
'Glimmer a smile, stand still, then take the path back home' 98
'All night, sleep was equivalent to time' 99
'Shoots of grass pierce one's face and hands' 100
'To the squares on our walls and ?oors' 101
'Desist, desist. The crumbling sentence dies' 102
An Attempt at Describing a Room 103
Sestina 104
Ode to a City 106
Two Poems About Love 109
'Although the well is bottomless and steep' 111
'In the indigent cities, it's time to leave friends behind us' 112
Ghetto 113
A Poem About Friends 114
Thanksgiving Day 117
Autumn in Copenhagen 119
Sheremetyevo, 1977 123
'Bit by bit, at the edge of the unforeseen land' 125
'I have learned to see in the dark' 126
A Museum in Hobart 128
'Before the middle of July, Paris' 131
Berlin Subway. Hallesches Tor 133
East Rock 134
Instruction 136
Pestel Street 139
In the Fire 142
'An enormous book begins to ?ap' 143
'Half a mile away, where the highways cross' 144
Tu, Felix Austria 145
'A projector ?ickers in the somewhat cramped hall' 150 ?
Henkus Hapenckus, In Memoriam 151
San Michele 153
The Member of the Landing Crew 154
A View from an Alley 156
Notes 157
Bibliography 163
The translators 168
THE JUNCTION (2005)
New England Harbour 19
The Emigre 20
A New Postcard from the City of K. 22
Dunes at Watermill 25
Arrival in Atlantis 29
For an Older Poet 30
Two Apocrypha 32
The Junction 35
After the Lecture 37
Uzupis 41
Theseus Leaving Athens 42
On a Mountain Ridge Near Jordan 44
Discipline and Punish. A Visit to the Detention Centre IZ-45/1 48
From Landwehrkanal to Spree 50
Ormond Quay 53
Song of the Borderland 54
Homage to Shqiperia 56
Anno Domini 2002 58
La Baigneuse 60
On the Boulevard by Town Hall 62
A Valediction, Forbidding Mourning 63
Commentary 62
In the Lake Region 66
Limbo 67
He Who Turned Around at the Border 69
Antonio Vivaldi 71
Las Meninas 72
For R.K. 73
Landscape, Summer 2001 74
Verses for a Child's Birth 75
Pastoral 77
from WINTER DIALOGUE (1997)
A Poem About Memory 81
Winter Dialogue 82
'I was welcomed by twilight and cold' 85
To the Memory of a Poet. Variation 88
Nel Mezzo Del Cammin Di Nostra Vita 90
The Shield of Achilles 81
The Eleventh Canto 94
'We've been seized by the pull of the universe' 97
'Glimmer a smile, stand still, then take the path back home' 98
'All night, sleep was equivalent to time' 99
'Shoots of grass pierce one's face and hands' 100
'To the squares on our walls and ?oors' 101
'Desist, desist. The crumbling sentence dies' 102
An Attempt at Describing a Room 103
Sestina 104
Ode to a City 106
Two Poems About Love 109
'Although the well is bottomless and steep' 111
'In the indigent cities, it's time to leave friends behind us' 112
Ghetto 113
A Poem About Friends 114
Thanksgiving Day 117
Autumn in Copenhagen 119
Sheremetyevo, 1977 123
'Bit by bit, at the edge of the unforeseen land' 125
'I have learned to see in the dark' 126
A Museum in Hobart 128
'Before the middle of July, Paris' 131
Berlin Subway. Hallesches Tor 133
East Rock 134
Instruction 136
Pestel Street 139
In the Fire 142
'An enormous book begins to ?ap' 143
'Half a mile away, where the highways cross' 144
Tu, Felix Austria 145
'A projector ?ickers in the somewhat cramped hall' 150 ?
Henkus Hapenckus, In Memoriam 151
San Michele 153
The Member of the Landing Crew 154
A View from an Alley 156
Notes 157
Bibliography 163
The translators 168