Jonas Mekas
Words Apart and Others : Jonas Mekas Poems 1967-1998
Author(s) Jonas Mekas
Format softcover book
Year 2018
Language(s) English
Pages 88 pages
Publisher Brooklyn Rail
Description
Translated from the Lithuanian by Vyt Bakaitis. Words Apart and Others presents for the first time to English-speaking audiences poems spanning three decades of Jonas Mekas's career (1967-1998). The book opens with a timely and insightful preface by poet Anne Waldman.
"In his poems, legendary filmmaker and artist Jonas Mekas undertakes a Dantean journey through the circles surrounding the self. And like Dante, instead of seeing horizontally from a fixed place to the horizon, Mekas sees vertically, but from the illuminated world to the depths of experience. In addition to staging a vertiginous examination of the meaning of a life, the striking verticality of his lines functions as an auger 'that goes / deeper, / deeper / inside'.
— Forrest Gander
"Just like his films, Jonas Mekas's poems retain their dignity, their rhythm unfolding as the poet looks at mountains from an airplane. Later, he is somewhat like an actor sitting on the shore, anticipating darkness, using 'soul' in the singular, remembering his childhood and his old friends, then it's daytime, bright yellow, and he begins again. The colors are true, the experience is so real. Mekas's poems are a true delight to read, timely and refreshing like a perfect glass of water.
— Eileen Myles