Vera Basor’s fourth poetry collection. “Byzantine Blue” is her entelechy: a search for the blue, for the heights, for the boundless. In poems where everything has scent, light, sound, and breath, the poet seeks the essence of the world and quietly assures the other that they are “not alone.” The collection was presented to readers at the National Library of Trebinje.
What am I searching for?
For freedom in the morning air,
for happiness in a starry trail,
for a small bundle of sky
that fits in the palm of my hand.
Be Still and Listen
I am not here to keep the silence
of our glances.
I have fed my dreams with distances;
it was not tears that startled me,
but silences that speak aloud...
Together
When the mercy of God visits us,
fear disappears, every vice is in vain,
love and grace are all around us.
When the Lord’s blessing is poured
over the dark provinces of our soul,
every particle of our heart revives,
all grows and blossoms, life renews itself.
Life is lived again from the beginning.
Do not dream; it is lovelier to be silent together.
Reviews
All writing about another carries a trace of the autopoetic, and so does my account of Vera’s poetic voice. In Vera Basor’s poetry I find that generational pain, the sorrow of a stolen youth, a heightened metaphysics and religiosity, a questioning of the self and of the world’s fate, characteristic of all who confronted too early the dark side of history and the weight that life carries. “Byzantine Blue” is her entelechy, the goal she reaches toward, an integral part of being and a striving toward higher spheres of the spirit. Her poetic thought is therefore marked by the urge to reveal, through verse, the essence of the world, to strengthen the other and let them know they are “not alone.” In her poetry synaesthesia reigns: everything has scent, light, sound, and breath, “the scent of the sea and of distances, the sky’s depth and the sea’s, a spark in time and a drop in the ocean.” Vera’s view of time and eternity is striking. These are motifs she returns to again and again, and crossed together they form the leitmotif of this collection.
Milana Babić
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