by Linas Daugėla
Translated by Agnieška Leščinska

Austėja Jakas, Mėlynieji malonumai (Blue Pleasures), Baziliskas, Vilnius, 2024.

Austėja Jakas’s debut poetry collection Mėlynieji malonumai (Blue Pleasures) pulses with vivid depictions of daily life and a sensitivity to the world. The book’s editor, Gintaras Grajauskas, says that he eagerly awaited its release, explaining that “[t]hese poems aren’t as boring as some.”^[1] He praises Jakas for the way she captures reality with precision and her ability to “keep the observer’s gaze clear.”^[2] I believe that Jakas’s poetry revolves like a spinning top in her palm, where people, passersby, various imagery, and the narrator of both past and present collide. The narrator feels as though she’s tossing the coins of her life – with confident assurance that life could land on either side. Jakas knows what she’s doing.

Her poems are unexpected and original. Reading them, you don’t know what the narrator will say, what she’ll invent, or what she will add from her memories. The poems are crafted with a stream-of-consciousness technique, blending the narrator’s past memories, current experiences, and snippets of the surrounding environment, gathering the smallest details and unifying them into a bigger whole. According to poet and critic Lina Buividavičiūtė, Jakas’s work combines altered reality^[3] with fairytale motifs, often interwoven seamlessly with real-world themes.

The frequent shifts in thought in her poems are both deliberate and reasoned; the narrator explores one idea, then transitions to another, creating a layered snapshot of her thought process. Her reflections likewise proceed from one to another throughout the poem. Sometimes Jakas begins with a small observation, follows it with irony in the next stanza, and then jumps to other themes or images. These shifts, however, are connected by an emotion, a single conclusion, a shared, existing metaphor, or a metaphor by the narrator herself, who openly embraces the world and pieces the smallest details into a mosaic within herself. The result is a unique flow of language, where the thought process is erratic yet maintains cohesion and quality of meaning.

The poetry is narrative but infused with the narrator’s digressive reflections; this incoherent narrative is what makes her text poetic. In one poem, the narrator recalls Druskininkai, a sanatorium, sunlight, and remnants of snow and then talks about how the TV in her ward showed images of Kerala, suddenly pondering why “everything always sticks together, and I have to / experience so many memories” (p. 24). She continues, recalling the pine forest, TV channels, damp clothes, and crows feeding her mangoes and reflects on her desire to be somewhat significant. Her thoughts return to the pine forest, then to details from a personal memory, and conclude with how scary it is to carry love, saying it “lies along the spine, salt is beginning to build” (p. 25). The narrator adds abstract thoughts, which capture more than what she’s actually describing, for example, “nothing / is frozen” (p. 24). Because of this, the fragmented narrative is interwoven with environmental observations, making it challenging to state what feels personal and what feels foreign, as the narrator continues to try and draw that line.

The poet connects her created world with other literary contexts, also reinventing them. For example, in one poem she expresses compassion for the elderly with a Kafkaesque touch: “I feel pity for the cockroach that rolls over on its back / and can’t do anything / but wiggle its little legs / I saw a similarly looking elderly man […] / old people become as translucent as water / no matter how much they’ve been travelling the world” (p. 16). By likening the elderly to Kafka’s vermin, she evokes the vulnerability of aging and the inability to fight against time. The poems often take on a fatalistic tone, where the narrator recognizes her limited ability to change things, instead realizing she is a witness attempting to understand her own feelings – and what awaits her in the future – as best as she can.

In another poem, the narrator tries to understand others after imagining herself in their shoes. Children who live in orphanages are important to her. She recalls once thinking these children must feel fortunate because they didn’t have to experience the pain of losing their parents. She goes on to describe scenes of boys covered in gasoline jumping over bonfires, preserving their perceived masculinity, and learning to drive so they can steal cars and take drives with their girlfriends, who later become pregnant. Through these vivid details, the narrator reflects on the children’s difficult lives, capturing both their struggles and the worldview they form in response. Empathy and a deep sense of care for others drive the narrator’s perspective. When she states that “the majority of energy is wasted when you live without love / the majority of energy is wasted when you don’t know how to experience that love” (p. 39), the poem’s context changes to a broader one, shifting from children to love in general. This progression, from concrete depictions to abstract conclusions, gives the poems a refreshing quality, making them not only narrations of a certain world but also expressions of universal ideas.

Throughout the book, the poet skillfully weaves together disparate scenes around central ideas that are shaped by the poem’s narrative. In one poem, she talks about the market and work, then goes to discuss a dream, forming a realistic portrayal of labor contrasted with a surreal dream: “I felt compassion for it but it’s just a rat / but what’s this all about / yes it’s about a dream / a dream where I saw my father with different eyes” (p. 18). While these elements may initially seem unrelated, they are connected by the repetitions and the question, “what does this say about my heart I don’t know” (p. 19). Such a strategy works because the different stories lead to that one lingering question.

The collection also includes many Eastern motifs seamlessly integrated into the poems. The narrator herself says that “it’s strange to be in India and not write about it” (p. 46), and when she does, it’s often ironic: “the husband puts the cobra in the room until it kills the wife […] / 10,000 rupees / 115 euros” (p. 47) or, “I knew a dog which used to sleep on such a prayer mat […] it didn’t pray, it just slept” (p. 48). The poet critically re-evaluates Eastern cultures from a cautious, sometimes skeptical perspective. She focuses on specific people, details, fragments – all that is important to her. When traveling, she is herself and doesn’t embrace foreign cultures, yet she tries to discover what she can learn from them to enrich herself.

Like the narrator in Lina Buividavičiūtė’s Tamsieji amžiai (Dark Ages) or Kristina Tamulevičiūtė’s Gyvybė (Life), Jakas’s narrator openly embraces the world. However, her approach is more narrative and fragmented, developing a stream-of-consciousness style that blends modern, fluid storytelling with surprising details and thematic shifts, making each poem rich with unexpected connections and insights.

1. Austėja Jakas, Mėlynieji malonumai, Baziliskas, Vilnius, 2024, IV cover.
2. ibid.
3. Literatūra ir menas, 2024. No. 16, p. 26.