Table of contents - The University of Texas at Dallas

Dear Mother
I spent a black winter
In the womb of curse
Where death finds
Man in solitude
With roads wrapped round his head
[. . .]
And because of the heavy field
I left one of my legs
And my youngest daughter’s tears
In dust
Buçpapaj’s words are filled with a fiery sadness.
He is bold and unapologetic in his grief. In
“The Night Over Kosova,” he tells of the hatesparked
fires that destroyed homes, hearts, and
such beauty. Buçpapaj mourns in tears and
flame, and through him, his nation finds a voice.
Buçpapaj’s poems are generally short,
usually less than a page, and they tend to
end suddenly, with strong, yet understated
aphorisms, the effect of which is startling —
much like the effect of the war’s losses on the
people. This is no accident. It also pulls the
reader’s attention to the poignant conclusion of
each poem. Characteristically short lines work
well with this technique; the devices reflect each
other in form and in effect. Short lines, at times,
have the effect of making the speaker sound
as though he is gasping for breath, as though
wounded or exhausted (as he is in “A Letter
to My Mother”). The short, enjambed lines
combined with virtually nonexistent punctuation
can also accelerate the reading of the poem,
and this effect, combined with the often sudden
conclusions, leaves us somewhat dizzy — like
running off the edge of the earth into space —
at which point we realize what Buçpapaj had
in mind all along: to yank the solid foundation
from beneath us in order to make us feel what
he and so many others felt at the great losses
they suffered. With the poems’ conclusions, and
often within the poems as well, one finds oneself
soaring off the edge of the earth in defiance of
gravity, and this changes one’s conception of
“necessary” footing, just as the great losses due
to war must have affected those who suffered it.
What charms me most about this book is
the way Buçpapaj employs such fresh, stunning
images within his metaphor. I have selected only
three of the numerous examples from the book.
They speak for themselves:
Dusk
Had fallen from the trees
Down on school children’s bags
The sound of the hearth’s ashes
Rolling round the world (from “Kosovë
1999”)
The Big Marsh
Still eating land from under
The ribs of the dead (from “The Field of
Tplani”)
Having the color of North Winds
The river was the wind’s portrait
Standing over trees (From “The Wind’s
Portrait”)
Buçpapaj employs everything he loves and
everything he hates in order to paint a precise
portrait of his broken heart. The pages overflow
with sunsets, mountains, birds, books, and corn
fields. But we also see abandoned ruins, exodus
engulfed in darkness, the muddy, frozen hands
of children, and the dead beneath a tangle of
burnt, labyrinthine roads of a ravaged land.
The dead remind us that, despite the season of
renewal, some of the most valuable losses will
never be regained. As the poet writes in “Total
Disillusion,” “Homeland has abandoned / His
own home.”
The poems are haunted, as the poet’s heart
is haunted — riddled with ghosts of the lost and
an atmosphere of appalled, exhausted silence. In
the shivers of the poet’s heart, we see the dead:
Translation Review 79