ABSTRACT
For readers who have wandered long and far among formally ambitious or eccentric kinds of contemporary poetry, the verse of Tomas Venclova may resound like a solemn summons. This book consists of uncollected renderings of Venclova's verse. In Venclova's verse, dichotomies often arise between shrewd eyewitness scrutiny and the wry detached contemplation offered by historical knowledge. Venclova's search for equilibrium pertains to his fundamental classicism, which is not to say that his poems are devoid of emotion, nor that his classicism implies political conservatism, as Ellen Hinsey points out. Venclova then moves from these poetic rudiments to a philosophical standpoint that somewhat resembles Heidegger's concept of a genuine poet "hearkening to being". Perception, politics, philosophy, poetics—these four p's are the angles forming a sort of golden rectangle in his verse or vision. Venclova's attempt to grasp this "possibility" might be said to form something like the fifth p or angle in the golden rectangle of his vision.
