Kiss the Eyes of Peace

Praise for Kiss the Eyes of Peace

"One of the great Central European poets of the late twentieth century, the Slovene Tomaz Salamun is a madman. A master of chance, adrenaline, and inspiration, Salamun's poems don't unfold, they erupt with the volcanic energy of tumultuous times, both personal and historical. Like Blake and Whitman before him, a divine unity is at their core, and in these new translations by Brian Henry we are given the Salamunian universe, prophetic and exhilarating, created by the most flexible of poetic minds in the act of the human urge to create."-Ales Steger, author of The Book of Bodies

"Salamun's work is alive with provocation and imaginative intensity, aesthetic risk, antic intelligence, mercury, lightning."-Robert Hass, author of The Apple Trees at Olema

"This book will revolutionize the way that Tomaz Salamun is perceived by English readers. Not only is it the first comprehensive English selection from his entire body of work, uncovering many hidden gems, but it also stands as a remarkable culmination of more than two decades of dedication by Brian Henry, a poet who shared a profound connection with Tomaz. With meticulous precision and wild poetic power, Henry presents an English rendition of Salamun at its finest."-Ales Steger, author of The Book of Bodies

Praise for Tomaz Salamun

"His poems will continue to defy categorization, but they will be remembered for the way they walked the tightrope between ecstasy and despair, the rational and the irrational, the sublime and the horrible."-Paris Review

"He is too slippery to be compared to anything . . . He is, as a poet, supremely clever, and then he is also intelligent enough to dampen this cleverness in the name of poetry when he feels like it. His work is elegant and ironic and often surreal and lined with dark laughter but it can also be sharp and forbidding. Nothing is lost on him."-Guardian

"By turns brutal and coy, gnomic and blunt, the Slovenian poet . . . insistently dismembers the world, only to slyly recreate and celebrate it."-Publishers Weekly

"Salamun has exerted a great deal of influence on many younger poets . . . . He's a world-class poet. He's easily the best poet of the Balkans, and one of the best of them all."-Iowa Review