Kiss the Eyes of Peace

Tomaž Šalamun was born in 1941 in Zagreb, Croatia, and raised in Koper, Slovenia. He is the author of more than fifty books of poetry and his work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages. A curator and conceptual artist prior to becoming an acclaimed poet, his honors include the Prešeren Prize, the European Prize for Poetry, the Mladost Prize, the Jenko Prize, and a Pushcart Prize. He served as Cultural Attaché to the Slovenian Embassy in New York and, in addition to serving as a Fulbright Fellow at Columbia University, held various visiting professorships across the United States. He died in Ljubjiana, Slovenia, in 2014.Brian Henry is the translator of Tomaž Šalamun’s Selected Poems and Woods and Chalices, as well as Aleš Debeljak’s Smugglers and six books by Aleš Šteger, most recently Burning Tongues: New and Selected Poems. Henry is also the author of Permanent State, ten other books of poetry, and the collection of essays, Things Are Completely Simple: Poetry and Translation. His work has received numerous honors, including two NEA fellowships, the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, a Howard Foundation fellowship, and the Best Translated Book Award. He lives in Richmond, Virginia.

• Foreword by Ilya Kaminsky Introduction by Brian Henry Poker (1966)The Purpose of a Cloak (1968) Pilgrimage for Maruška (1971)White Ithaka (1972) Amerika (1972)Arena (1973)Falcon (1974)Turbines (1975)Imre (1975)Druids (1975)Feast (1976)Stars (1977)Angel’s Method (1978)The History of Light Is Orange (1979) On the Tracks of Game (1979) Masks (1980)Ballad for Metka Krašovec (1981)Analogies of Light (1982)The Voice (1983) Sonnet about Milk (1984) Soy Realidad (1985)Ljubljana Spring (1986)The Measure of Time (1987)Living Wound, Living Juice (1988)The Child and the Deer (1990) Ambergris (1995) Black Swan (1997) Book for My Brother (1997)Sea (1999) Woods and Chalices (2000)Blackboards (2002)From There (2003)With Archilochus by the Cyclades (2004)To sink in the nets under the olive trees (2004) Sun’s Chariot (2005)Blue Tower (2007)Njanja visits me out of nowhere like a fish (2008) Deception (2008)Cold Fairy Tales (2009)Season (2010)Robber (2010)Opera Buffa (2011)Andes (2012)Michael is ours! (2012)Breath (2013)Mollusk (2013)Fate (2013)Babies (2014)Orgies (2015)The One Who Raises a Paw Is Asleep (2015)And Everywhere There Was Snow (2021)AppendixNotes Acknowledgments xxx

Praise for Kiss the Eyes of Peace“One of the great Central European poets of the late twentieth century, the Slovene Tomaž Šalamun is a madman. A master of chance, adrenaline, and inspiration, Šalamun’s poems don’t unfold, they erupt with the volcanic energy of tumultuous times, both personal and historical. Like Blake and Whitman before him, a divine unity is at their core, and in these new translations by Brian Henry we are given the Šalamunian universe, prophetic and exhilarating, created by the most flexible of poetic minds in the act of the human urge to create.”—Aleš Šteger, author of The Book of Bodies"Šalamun's work is alive with provocation and imaginative intensity, aesthetic risk, antic intelligence, mercury, lightning."—Robert Hass, author of The Apple Trees at Olema"This book will revolutionize the way that Tomaž Šalamun is perceived by English readers. Not only is it the first comprehensive English selection from his entire body of work, uncovering many hidden gems, but it also stands as a remarkable culmination of more than two decades of dedication by Brian Henry, a poet who shared a profound connection with Tomaž. With meticulous precision and wild poetic power, Henry presents an English rendition of Šalamun at its finest."—Aleš Šteger, author of The Book of BodiesPraise for Tomaž Šalamun“His poems will continue to defy categorization, but they will be remembered for the way they walked the tightrope between ecstasy and despair, the rational and the irrational, the sublime and the horrible.”—Paris Review “He is too slippery to be compared to anything . . . He is, as a poet, supremely clever, and then he is also intelligent enough to dampen this cleverness in the name of poetry when he feels like it. His work is elegant and ironic and often surreal and lined with dark laughter but it can also be sharp and forbidding. Nothing is lost on him.”—Guardian“By turns brutal and coy, gnomic and blunt, the Slovenian poet . . . insistently dismembers the world, only to slyly recreate and celebrate it.”—Publishers Weekly“Šalamun has exerted a great deal of influence on many younger poets . . . . He’s a world-class poet. He’s easily the best poet of the Balkans, and one of the best of them all.”—Iowa Review