Look Back, Look Ahead: The Selected Poems of Srečko Kosovel
PurchaseTranslated by Ana Jelnikar and Barbara Siegel Carlson.
This is a curated selection of poems by Srečko Kosovel, regarded as the greatest Slovenian poet of the twentieth century. The collection presents his work in English translation, offering access to a significant literary figure who died at age twenty-two.
Tomaž Šalamun describes Kosovel’s work as comparable to viewing Van Gogh’s final paintings—intense, immediate, and deeply moving. He characterizes Kosovel as essential to understanding Slovenia’s literary destiny.
The collection includes introspective verse, such as lines about walking “in a small coat of words” while concealing “a warm, bright world” underneath, exploring themes of modest exteriors containing rich inner lives.