Overview

The Taste of Lightningis a new selection of poems by Ivan V. Lali, one of 20th-century Yugoslavia's most crucial poets. Lali's poetry is alive with seeing and feeling the world a world of sun and wind, water and fire. He is also a poet of love a love for his wife Branka that 'matures like wine' over the decades. From adolescence, through young adulthood, to the onset of old age, where 'We are twin foci of the same ellipse... Which links two other foci: death and love.' But for Lali, the seen and the felt need to be held in memory if they are to last beyond the instant. This means putting them into words, in speech or a poem, though doing so distances us from the raw freshness of experience: 'Images I barter for the right to pronounce them, / Names I slip as a bribe to time'. Memory, for Lali, is also cultural. Many of his poems speak about Yugoslavia's Eastern and Western heritages. About his native Serbia's history and landscape, and its roots in Byzantium and ultimately in Ancient Greece. But also the seascapes and culture of the Croatian Adriatic, and of Italy. TheTaste of Lightningintroduces new readers to this grand master of European poetry, whose other books in English are now out of print. And for those who know Lali's poetic world, it combines revisions of previously published translations with poems not seen before in English. TheTaste of Lightningtraces the whole arc of Lali's poetic career. From the directness of his early work in the 1950s, which emerged from the trauma of a wartime boyhood. Through the rich imagery and startlingly apt similes of his mature verse. But it also charts another voice, thoughtful and meditative, that gradually grows more prominent. This voice finally reflects, just before Lali's death in 1996, on what God's purpose might be in a world wounded by personal and national tragedy: 'may he forgive my fear / That he created me, as the book says, in his own image'. Francis R. Jones, the book's editor and translator, knew Lali well, and has worked with his poems for almost five decades. Of Jones's 15 translation prizes to date, five were awarded for his versions of Lali's poetry.

Full Product Details

Author:   Ivan V. Lalić ,  Francis R. Jones
Publisher:   Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Imprint:   Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 1.40cm , Length: 23.40cm
ISBN:  

9781780377612

ISBN 10:   1780377614
Pages:   176
Publication Date:   20 November 2025
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Language:   Serbian

Table of Contents

10 Acknowledgements 11 Introduction from Time, Fires, Gardens (1961) 21 A rusty needle 23 How Orpheus sang 24 Cathedrals 26 Young love 27 Prayer 28 A voice singing in gardens 30 from Four epitaphs 30 To a dancer 30 To a sailor 30 To a singer 31 from Orpheus on deck 31 Song for Eurydice 33 Song for the dead 34 Fresco 36 Byzantium 38 Death with a falcon 39 from Melissa 39 Voices of the dead I 40 Morning 41 Slavery 42 The Argonauts 44 Marina 45 Three squalls of rain 47 Love 48 from Atlantis 48 Eye-witness report 50 Love: a fragment 51 Tyrrhenian Sea 52 Inventory of moonlight 54 Roman quartet 54 I 55 II 56 III 57 IV 58 from Prolegomena to waking: shores 58 1 58 4 from Act (1963) 61 from Algol 61 1 62 3 63 4 64 Snowy night 65 Winter letter 66 Winter morning 67 March 68 from Spring liturgy for a dead poet 68 1 70 4 72 Young woman from Pompeii 73 Places we love 74 Aosta 75 In praise of the poem 76 Belgrade Airport, June 77 Continent 78 Marina II 79 from Nereid 79 3 80 5 from Circle (1968) 83 Tomb in Prague 84 Mozart 85 Skopje’s monologue 85 1 86 2 87 Waking, one winter night 89 Lyric 90 from Love in July / 2 91 Orange 92 Photographs: a romance 94 Joanna from Ravenna 94 1 95 2 96 from Dubrovnik, a winter’s tale 96 The masons 97 Portal: pietà 98 The Dark Province from Of the Works of Love, or Byzantium (1969) 101 Of the works of love 102 Memory of an orchard 103 * * * 104 The sea described from memory 105 Song of the statue in the earth 106 Byzantium VII from Fading Contact (1975) 109 Winter sea 110 Marina V 111 Genius loci 112 Fiesole, rain 113 Belgrade from old photographs 113 1 115 2 116 3 117 Cantico delle creature 118 Letter to John Berryman 120 from Athos in five songs 120 Daphne 121 On the way to Esphigmenou 122 Byzantium VIII, or Chilandari 124 Mnemosyne 124 1 125 2 126 3 127 4 128 To sons growing up from The Passionate Measure (1984) 131 A note on poetics 132 The spaces of hope 133 The raven’s monologue 134 Elegy, or the Danube at Donji Milanovac 136 Five letters 136 1 137 2 138 3 139 4 140 5 141 Étude 142 Looking glass 143 Morning Argolid 144 Acqua alta 144 1 145 2 146 3 from Script (1992) 149 In praise of sleeplessness 151 Octaves on summer 153 from Strambotti 153 1 153 2 153 3 154 4 154 5 154 8 155 9 155 10 156 Never lonelier 157 Pietà 158 Sea from Four Canons (1996) 162 from First canon 162 3 163 4 164 from Second canon 164 2 165 5 167 Translator’s notes 176 About the translator

Reviews

Drawing from the rich Mediterranean tradition, [Lalić] searches for his people’s cultural roots. His wide-ranging quest attests to the fact that Lalić is as much a world poet as he is a Serbian poet. Not only is the subject matter of his poems of universal value, but his measured, elegant, neoclassical approach to poetry is timeless. Francis R. Jones has translated this important collection into an English that is as vibrant as Lalić’s Serbian. The translator’s faithfulness to the original is complemented by an often exquisite choice of words – a fitting tribute to a great poet. -- Vasa D. Mihailovitch * World Literature Today, on Fading Contact * A remarkable poet… Although he has many lyrical poems on themes of love and landscape, the most distinctive part of his work relates to the ebb and flow of historical conquest and change on the northern shores of the Mediterranean… He broods over darkly crucial events like the fall of Byzantium…and delivers interesting questions about the ambiguities of memory. -- Edwin Morgan * PBS Bulletin, on A Rusty Needle * A poetry is real as anything “original” shines in many of the translations… Far from being ingrowing reveries or blurred and plangent meditations on the lost, these lyrics are ablaze with successes of metaphor… They share a pungent ghostliness that is…their most distinctive quality. -- Michael Bird * PN Review, on The Works of Love *

Author Information

Ivan V. LaliLali's poems combine a warm sensuality with a love for the natural world, vivid images and similes with thoughtful reflection, here-and-now experience with a backdrop of deep history. In Celia Hawkesworth's words, his work 'crackles with brilliant, arresting imagery forged by the heat of concentrated thought and, above all, it breathes with compassion and humanity'.

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