To Taste the River - Paperback

by Baiba Bičole (Author), Bitite Vinklers (Translator)

Baiba Bičole belongs to the postwar generation of Latvian poets living in exile who reached artistic maturity outside their native country and broke with the older exile generation's traditional, nationalistic poetry. In To Taste the River, Bičole's poems are lyrical and personal, often with intense emotion and startling imagery. Shown through different prisms, like variations on a theme, her subjects include separation, loss, and time; the power of language and song; and love. Central to her vision is nature, both as subject and metaphor. Appearing most frequently are waters (rain, mist, ice, rivers), birds, sun, and sky. Her unique voice renders a continuing motif of thirst, along with the need for freedom and movement, usually expressed through transformation. Nature in her poetry is distinct in that it is rooted in the world of the traditional Latvian folk songs, the dainas, where nature is animistic and personified, and the human and natural worlds are deeply interrelated. This is Bičole's first collection of poems in English translation.

Author Biography

Bitite Vinklers is a translator of Latvian folklore and contemporary literature. Her translations have been published in numerous anthologies and journals, including The Paris Review, Kenyon Review, The Massachusetts Review, and Two Lines. Recent translation collections include Imants Ziedonis' Each Day Catches Fire: Poems (Red Dragonfly Press, 2015); Knuts Skujenieks' Seed in Snow: Poems (BOA Editions, 2016); and Aleksandrs Čaks' Poems (Riga, Latvia: Jumava Press, 2018). She lives and works as an editor in New York.