Tomaz Salamun is one of the most stunning and original poets alive, and anyone at all interested in poetry should get this book: it is subversive, shocking, and outrageous as well as tender and beautiful.

Slovenia has always been a nation of poets (the oldest known musical instrument, a Neanderthal bear-bone flute, was discovered there). As their country was annexed, subdivided, and subjected to one conquerer after another, the Slovene language and literature held them together.
Of the many fine Slovene poets writing today, Salamun is probably the most prolific and best-known -- and deservedly so. This anthology presents a well-chosen overview of his work, put into English by a variety of translators. My only criticism: their styles are so different that a reader may be left uncertain whether the dizzying variability of the diction is Salamun's or theirs. (An out-of-print volume, "The Shepherd, The Hunter" translated by Sonja Kravanja, I felt gave a better sense of Salamun's distinctive "voice.") Still, this is a good selection, nicely presented, and well worth reading.

A slow beginning to the book, and to some degree, it rings with that American, competitive, referential, historo-hype you get from great foreign writers who, all of the sudden, find themselves in Radio City Poetry Hall because the academy-entrenched poets feel obliged/committed to placing medals on them and getting them BIGHOUSE publications for their profound simplicity and historical signifincance despite whether or not they truly beleive in them and their art. Salamun is a tribal artist, the only kind of artist, and I know that what I instinctually feel is missing from half the poems is his inability to take greater risks, to do what he does best--- to leave the world of poetry in its mess of political debris and sing without question the mystery of objectivity and the beauty of discovering the self without self consciousness. His tribe is growing...smaller or larger makes no difference.

Still, Feast is much better than 98% of what we find in the bighouse.

"I", "Bosporus", and "I Smell Horses in Poland" is where he's really present. Don't hesitate in deciding about the book for; "Whoever eats from the Tree of Life loses all his sins"(p.9)