Uspravna zemlja (The Vertical Earth) [or Earth Erect] is by far the most historical of Popa's books. As the first poem announces, it is a pilgrimage to the historical monuments of the Serbian spiritual tradition. Nevertheless, it is the time-lessness of the archetype in each instance that predominates and orders each of the five cycles. Consequently, we have a cycle entitled "The Field of Kosovo," which through its seven poems explores the mythical and spiritual connotations of the famous battle between the Serbs and the Turks.
Popa's method of constructing a poem is both innovative and rooted in tradition. It consists of an imaginative dismantling of the archetype, whether it be the lame wolf, the old Serbian tribal god, or the more universal one of the shepherd. The material, dynamic components of the archetype are examined and reassembled by the poet. Of course, as any archetype contains contradictory motifs and symbols, that paradox becomes the dialectic of the complex psychic processes that underline its recreation. In addition, the contemporary idiomatic language, in which the original animistic and mythmaking consciousness of mankind survives, becomes the concrete vehicle and voice of these poems. The result is a poetry which engages the deepest unconscious responses of the native reader, while possessing at the same time an ontological and epic appetite which give it the stature of one of the most complex and successful poetic works of our time.
Charles Simic, "Other Slavic Languages: 'Uspravna zemlja'," in Books Abroad (copyright 1973 by the University of Oklahoma Press), Vol. 47, No. 2, Spring, 1973, p. 392.
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