The Bandit Wind: Poems

These works by the noted Macedonian poet are the fragmented products of a febrile imagination that transforms profound perception into a hypersensual reality partaking of the tumult of the unconscious. Janevski's pk collection is populated with itinerant characters who view life as a maelstrom of images, feelings and impressions. A bandit possesses a ``wolf-like rage'' and an ``eternal hunger . . . rabid for life.'' He seeks to eat his fill of existence, a ``tough, poisonous, bitter meat that any jackal would feast on.'' The speaker in another poem admires a woman whose sexuality is so potent that it seems as if ``every one of her hairs is pregnant.'' But it is not only the material world with which Janevski is concerned. In one of the volume's more lucid moments, the poet asks, ``Tell me, O earth, you cosmic ant, / what kind of crumb is Slavko Janevski?'' Although often difficult to decipher, the poet's imagery is wonderfully suggestive, skillfully depicting stasis by using verbs that describe violent physical action. This unique and challenging bilingual collection, the first of Janevski's to appear in this country, is fluently translated by Simic (Pulitzer Prize winner, for The World Doesn't End ). Holton edited Reading the Ashes: An Anthology of the Poetry of Macedonia. (July)