Reviews

I first met Erika Drungytė, a poet, translator, and the editor-in-chief of the monthly cultural publication Nemunas, when she acted as one of the jurists at a literary contest. I was one of the contestants. I still remember the feedback she gave us about our writing and especially the importance of what she described as the

According to the publisher’s blurb, Jūros nėra (There Is No Sea), the fifth book of poetry by the poet and philosopher Aušra Kaziliūnaitė, is conceptual and performative. In it, the author develops the idea actualised in her earlier collection, Esu aptrupėjusios sienos (I Am Crumbled Walls): the interaction between images and texts expands the semantic

In Lithuanian, the saying “It’s just some little flowers” means that the event in question has not reached its full extent, that it is only the beginning, nothing to be taken too seriously. However, sometimes the things that, at first glance, seem simple and superficial are anying but.  Sometimes, hidden depths and additional meanings lie

Saulius Tomas Kondrotas is an exceptional phenomenon in Lithuanian literature. In 1977, when Brezhnevian stagnation was in its second decade, he made his debut with the memorable short story collection Pasaulis be ribų (A World Without Boundaries). He inspired and taught his own and subsequent generations to trespass boundaries and expand them. “To shed off the harness

Ieva Toleikytė’s name is well-established in the Lithuanian literary scene. She is an excellent translator (Toleikytė translates from Danish) and an established writer. In 2009, her debut book Garstyčių namas (House of Mustard) won the First Book Contest and was included in the Top 12 Most Creative Lithuanian Books of that year. Now, Toleikytė comes forth with

Bodies is the second book by the journalist, screenwriter, and novelist Akvilė Kavaliauskaitė. Having published her debut novel Two Lives in a Single Summer five years ago, Kavaliauskaitė makes a comeback with a collection of short stories. And this return is truly strong. The title of the book precisely describes its essence. The short stories reflect a wide

Jonas Zdanys’s The Angled Road: Collected Poems 1970-2020 covers the astonishing career of a well-known poet. After all, fifty years of anything—marriage, employment— is quite an accomplishment, and in our world today, just living that long is getting more impressive by the hour. As with any anniversary of such magnitude, a celebration is in order, and mostly

The early twentieth century analytic philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein is perhaps best known for his provocative statement: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Despite the poetic nature of the aphorism itself (rhyme, repetition, rhythm, parallelism), it does pose an existential challenge for a lyric poet—one who strives to give words and form to

Some are drawn to leave home, wander the world, in and out of cultures, passing through periods of time by means of humanity’s written heritage, even composing hymns out of wonder at life’s myriad joys and sorrows. Kerry Shawn Keys has been one such orphic wanderer. From his start in rural Pennsylvania, to the Ivy

The poet, architect, and traveller Tomas S. Butkus (Slombas) rarely has work published, but when his books appear, they turn into an event. Ežerožemė (Lakeland), written from 1997 to 2020, reveals that Butkus’s poetry has absorbed a fair dose of the sweeping spirit typical of the first ten years of Lithuania’s independence. In the early 1990s,