Having Never Met - Inga Pizāne (A Midsummer Night's Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Having Never Met.  Inga Pizāne.  Translated by Jayde Will.  Periscope #05.  A Midsummer Night's Press.  New York, New York.  2018.

Inga Pizāne's Having Never Met comes to Today's book of poetry from Latvia via the very generous translation skills of Jayde Will, and we are all very grateful.  Today's book of poetry was swept up immediately by Pizāne's precise narratives on the acts of desire and the battles of the heart.

Inga Pizāne keeps things clean and tight regardless of whether she's writing about domestic bliss or the other evil end of the spectrum where relationships turn into a stinking dumpster of bad decisions that you never want to sleep with again.

💫💫💫

From I don't know you

to I know you better than myself

we traveled far and wide.

Until we reached our final destination.

Then we traveled back

even farther and wider

from I know you better than myself

to I don't know you at all.

💫💫💫

It's as though Pizāne knows us all, our inner thoughts and workings, what we think when we think of love and what we think of love when it leaves as though born on the wind.  Having Never Met is one tidy ship.  If this were jazz, Inge Pizāne would be a female Paul Desmond.  Complicated as you'd ever need but pure and direct and unmistakably cool.

We all want love and Today's book of poetry applauds Inga Pizāne in her attempts to sing with a real voice.  So much music we hear now is strained through a tuner so we no longer know what is true.  Pizāne suffers know such travail, we hear the pleasure of a natural and beautiful voice.  Inga Pizāne fights all those battles of the inside with aplomb.

💫💫💫

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💫💫💫

Today is a bit of a landmark for Today's book of poetry.  Today's blog/review is our 750th.  

Today's book of poetry celebrated Easter with a little office hunt.  We had Milo, our head technician, hiding eggs, chocolate eggs everywhere.  I fear we'll be finding them until Christmas.

Today's book of poetry needs to give a huge shout out to Barbare Kulig Spanton and her family, Clara, Philip, Sean and Asilka, for the Easter egg dying experience.  Not sure how Today's book of poetry got to 62 without ever hot-waxing an egg but I can now strike that off of our list.  It was splendid.

Another thing Today's book of poetry is especially happy about is that Inga Pizāne proves what we have always believed.  There is excellent poetry all over our world.  Having Never Met can stand solidly in an poetry library.

💫💫💫

If not for you,

I would have left on that

airplane long ago,

a cheap flight

going whoknowswhere,

and while the stewardess would tell us about

the life vests and

how long the flight was going to be,

I would look at the clouds

which wouldn't even seem beautiful,

If not for you,

who smothers my migratory bird instincts,

if not for you,

who would keep me here

without keeping me here,

I would learn

happiness

at seminars

💫💫💫

Today's book of poetry is convinced that there is no better feeling than being in love.  No worse feeling than no longer being in love.  Having Never Met touches on both solitudes with equal charisma and charm.  

Inga Pizāne can burn.

Inga Pizāne

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Inga Pizāne (born 1986 in Kraslava) is a Latvian poet. Pizāne has studied education in Latvia and Sweden, simultaneously attending lectures at the Literary Academy. Her first collection of poems titled You are no Snow (Tu neesi sniegs) was published in 2016 by Janis Roze. She has performed at the Poetry Days events in Riga, the European Poetry festival, the America’s Poetry festival in New York and in other international workshops and festivals; and her work has appeared in theatre and radio. She is currently preparing her second book of poems in Latvian and writing stories. Her collection of poems HAVING NEVER MET (translated from Latvian by Jayde Will) was published by A Midsummer Night’s Press. Her translated work has been published in Disclaimermag, Glasgow Review of Books, Tupelo Quarterly etc.

Jayde Will

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

Jayde Will is a literary translator from Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian.  Recent or forthcoming translations include Latvian author Daina Tabuna's short story collection The Secret Box (The Emma Press) and Latvian poet Artis Ostup's collection Gestures (Ugly Duckling Presse).  He lives in Riga.

Inga Pizāne and Helen Ivory - European Poetry Festival : Norwich

Video: fowlerpoetry

amidsummernightspress.com 

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