Zubor mjeseceve vode.

Mihailovich, Vasa D.

Veljko P. Bojic, the author of nine books (see e.g. WLT 69:2, p. 396, and 70:3, p. 729), is one of the most active Serbian writers in the diaspora. His four books of poetry, three novels, and two books of plays attest to his productivity as well as versatility (a book of short stories is in preparation). The verse collection Zubor mjeseceve vode (Ripple of Moon's Water) represents a body of poems Bojic wrote between 1954 and 1963 while still a student and which he has only now decided to publish as the first of six volumes of his earlier poems.

Written more than thirty-five years ago, these poems have preserved their original freshness remarkably well, and their topicality has lost little of significance. While many things have changed, the basic themes and dilemmas present in these poems have not. Most of the poems deal with two staple themes: love and homeland. The two are often intertwined, and both exude the basic tenor - the tragedy of human experience. Potentially trite and overused, in Bojic's poems these themes take on the peculiar flavor of his own experiences as a young Montenegrin, almost a child, who witnessed some of the worst ravages of war, especially the civil war. His own father and many of his relatives perished, mostly on the nationalist side opposing the communist revolution. The poet has never found his father's grave, for example, and the sadness stemming from such experiences echoes in his poems, coloring them with a patina of sorrow and loss but not of defeat. The poet is determined to record his poetic responses to these happenings both for his peace of mind and for posterity.

As in Bojic's other verse collections, these 278 poems, divided into eleven cycles, display a strong artistic acumen. Above all, there is the wealth of metaphors, expressed in a plethora of colors, scents, and sounds. One of his favorite poetic devices is synesthesia ("the lilac rustles with the scent of your hair"). "The Twilight's Kiss" demonstrates the full flavor of Bojic's poetry:

Late autumn rolls its dreary days at the bottom of the riverbed Rolls the dense mud of life Rolls immeasurable pain and fears Rolls our naked hunger

We the children without childhood Love our fiver Our river without overflowing Our sad river

The river recognizes not the sun's glare Recognizes not the stars' gleam Recognizes not the twilight's kiss Or the face of a young gift running naked on the banks The river rolls its own stench on the bottom Carrying us all rudely The sad fiver from the bottom And we are all immersed in it Sunk all the way to the bottom

In this maternal metaphor of a river, muddy but inexorable, the reader can grasp the tragic existence of "we, the children," reflecting both the devastating experiences the poet is subjected to and the strength he possesses in being able to leave behind a truly artistic testimonial of those experiences. Despite some verbosity and repetition, Bojic's poems reach their mark - the heart of the reader or listener-remaining a powerful poetic testament both to man's tragic existence and to an individual's effort to cope with that tragedy.

Vasa D. Mihailovich University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill