In the struggle against traditional verse-making, [Popa's] poetry, like that of Miodrag Pavlović, played a prominent role and contributed decisively to the victory of the modernists. Since [his first book of verse, Kora], he has gained steadily in stature and popularity; today he is considered one of the best, if not the best, of contemporary Yugoslav poets. (p. 24) Popa's world displays unique features. From the very first he showed a predilection for objects, for specifics rather than...

Popa's poetry [in his Collected Poems] is highly formalized. But it is not formalization in the senses of imagism or surrealism, though Popa … was finding his style at a time when more or less precise and intelligent versions of surrealism were a common fashion in European poetry. Cycles of poems link up in Popa's work to form both a human and a legendary landscape, the one included in the other…. [History] and myth seep naturally into the poet's apprehension of the presen...

The poems in [Vučja so, Živo meso, and Kuća nasred druma] were written during the last quarter-century, although most of them are of very recent vintage. As has been the case throughout his poetic career, Popa always writes with a well-conceived plan of cycles, so that new poems easily fit into the already existing entities or form a new cycle. At the same time, seldom is a new book of Popa's poems totally new, either thematically or formally. Some poems in these books are relate...

[Earth Erect] reproduces only four poems from the ample Penguin selection of Vasko Popa's work. These and thirty-two new translations are arranged in cycles: first, the stations of a pilgrimage (evoking ancient Serbian shrines); then St Sava's Spring (reviving the patron saint of Serbia, who milks the stones of the hillside to succour his wolves, the Serbs); scenes of Serbian defeat (providing tenuous reasons against despair—skulls that flower with laughter, blood streaming into the sun...

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 famo...

Vasko Popa's [Earth Erect is] based on themes from Serbian history and folklore…. A prevailing pattern is that the poems move to a point where a symbol comes into its own, establishing its truth within the surface reality. 'The Blackbird's Field', for instance, begins as                    A field like any other  �...