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Ten poems
Tone Škrjanec
“Looking deeply into things and, by no
means least of all, into other human
beings implies meditating on brevity,
on ephemerality—and this is what
Škrjanec does… Essentially, he makes
this query: if ‘everything’s temporary,’
as he states in ‘Noises are in the Air,’
can any depth or permanence
whatsoever be found anywhere in our
existences? And if every experience,
every perception, is superficial and
fleeting, what is the point of our
aliveness?
“Yet if such questioning and self-questioning underlie his poems,
he is by no means solemn, overbearing, lugubrious, or even overtly
‘poetic’ in his manner of carrying out these tasks. In fact, the
questioning and self-questioning are left unstated in the margins,
between the lines, or in the pre-text motivating or silently
accompanying his poem. If he ruminates, he spares us the details.
What he offers us, however, are flashes of something rather more
lasting than fugacity… Call it ‘presence,’ for lack of a better term…”
– John Taylor,
Arts Fuse
.
Poems translated from Slovenian by Ana Pepelnik and
Matthew Rohrer.