Eugenijus Ališanka

Published by the ever interesting, and usually excellent, 'Writings from an Unbound Europe' series, this is a slim volume of poems from one of Lithuania's best known contemporary poets. Alisanka's poems are mostly short, but the content makes the book feel weighty and dense. Alisanka's world is one of claustrophobic skies and grey buildings, of lives lived within suffocatingly delineated limits with only fleeting glimpses of eternal time and wide open space. They examine the limitations given to us as humans, and contrast the poet's abilities to imagine space and time with the concrete and asphalt that define our urban existences.
Although I enjoyed the collection, and thought it was clearly successful in communicating its ideas, there was perhaps not enough variety, both in themes and structures, to keep me engrossed throughout. The poems were tightly constructed, but a little mundane, and the unremittingly depressing tones were a bit much for me. An interesting collection, but not an especially memorable one for me.… (mehr)