Secrets Need Words: Indonesian Poetry, 1966-1998

""Indonesia's future is two-hundred million gaping mouths./ Indonesia's future is 15-watt light globes, some white and some black, lighting alternately./ Indonesia's future is a game of Ping Pong, going on all day and all night with a ball shaped like a goose egg./ Give/ Indonesia/ Back/ to me."" From the wonderfully didactic verse of Taufiq Ismail and the rest of ""The Generation of 1966"" to ""The Post Indonesia Generation"" that continues to press for renewal, Secrets Need Words: Indonesian Poetry, 1965-1998, a bilingual anthology, introduces readers to the political complexities and samizdat poetic salvos that marked the Suharto era. Edited by Harry Aveling, head of the Indonesian/Malay program at La Trobe University in Australia, the book is divided into theme-based chapters (""Nature and Irony""; ""The World Become Absurd,"" etc.) with short, cogent introductory notes and excellent translations throughout. The energy and inventiveness of this work are not to be missed. ( June)