I'm usually
somehow shy
about reading
my young
poems
because they don't
go with this
body anymore
it was '64
so probably I was twenty-three
or maybe twenty-two
I don't remember
no I started one in '63
so I was twenty-four
or twenty-three
p. 3
_________________
from TOMAZ
Beckman / Salamun
Wave Books, 2021
_________________
The author of more than forty poetry collections, with more than a dozen in English translation, Slovenian poet Tomaž Šalamun (July 4, 1941–December 27, 2014) is considered to be one of the most prominent poets of the Eastern European avant-garde. He published his first collection, Poker, in 1966 at the age of twenty-five. Early in his career, he edited the literary magazine Perspektive, for which he was briefly jailed on political charges. He later studied Art History at the University of Ljubljana before attending the University of Iowa and then becoming a Fulbright Fellow at Columbia University. After, he was invited to exhibit his work at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970, Šalamun lived for periods of time in the United States, working as the Slovenian Cultural Attaché in the 1990s and later teaching at a number of American universities, including the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Massachusetts, and the University of Alabama. Celebrated through many accolades, he was the recipient of the prestigious Jenko Prize and Slovenia’s Prešeren and Mladost Prizes. Šalamun passed away on December 27, 2014, in Ljubljana.
