When the publisher, Zephyr Press, chose Breathing Technique as the collection's title, they could not have known how apposite this would be in 2020, when the bilingual Serbian and English book of poems appeared, mid-pandemic. Nevertheless, Marija Knežević's title poem exudes a wry humor that feels nicely apt: “Follow self-care. Solutions are as near / As your hand on the keyboard. One click opens / An unknown world. Everyone will easily / Understand the informative film—no need to read” (97).
Marija Knežević lives in Serbia but has also lived in the United States, where she earned an MA at Michigan State University. To date she has published nine books of poetry, three novels, two books of essays, a book of stories, and a book chronicling correspondence from Belgrade during the 1999 NATO bombing. Two of her books have been translated into German, one into Polish, one into Russian, and her novel, Ekaterini, was published in Will Firth's English translation by Istros Books in 2013. In 2007 she was given the Serbian Đura Jakšić Award for In Tactum, a book of poetry.
While Knežević seldom adheres to a strict rhyme scheme, her poems respire with conversational pacing and flow, and Sibelan Forrester's English translations breathe with life, finding a kindred pace and flow for Knežević's fresh, quizzical voice, propelled by the cadences of speech and attention-getting line breaks. In her introduction to the collection, Forrester gives us a precious glimpse of her close work with the poet on the translations, and remarks that Knežević's poetry “rewards repeated reading” (ix).
A first read through the book shows just how diverse a poet Marija Knežević is, how varied her forms, how playful and exploratory her verse. One of the joys of rereading the poems is getting to know the cast of characters that the more narrative of these poems bring us. We have Charlie, the dog, who takes its owner, our poet, out for a walk (“Charlie,” 11). A teacher gardens in the morning while waiting for her daughter to return after a night out, the weeding being her way of confronting her “wall of worry” as she imagines her daughter: “…devotedly smashing / Benches, trash cans and the branches / Of young trees.” (“Day,” 35). The poet captures in a snapshot herself and an elderly man she watches while he fishes: “An old man's sitting on the quay and fishing. / For me he is an old man. / For many I'm already an old woman, and so: / A boy who has amassed a lot of years is sitting on the quay, fishing.” (“Fishing,” 59). A child calls to her father to see a gas bottle floating in the sea, oblivious to the tragedies facing the people who are on the move across the Mediterranean (“The Spirit from the Gas Bottle,” 159).
In her poems, assembled here from several earlier collections, Knežević ranges from grief (“40 days I haven't written a poem, / I, who do not count—especially days—/ Fixed in memory the start of the unutterable,” 63) to the irate: “Aching and still dreamy / hobbled / by the unpleasant duty to be clever / I waited in line and bought milk / but instead of a white stream/ what tumbled out were clots of alien / stale superficiality” (“A Diary of Minor Troubles,” 45). She tangles head-on with despair: “We, a terribly easy / Target of frigid crazes / Due to the wrested illusion / Of native soil (“The Landless,” 83), and often writes of love: “Love has a shape, like any brainchild of low tide and high tide. / Love has an hour / in the sand's relaxed breathing…” (“Morning Coffee,” 91), but also voices a wry defiance: “I want to be tubby! Let everyone see / How much of me. Spare me the dictates / of slenderness, fitness verses, coaches / Of poetry books for healthy life of the nation” (“Desperate Poem,” 41).
Forrester quotes critic Zorica Bečanović Nikoli, describing Knežević's poems as “deep and cheerful and bitter and ironic.” Repeated reading of these forty-eight poems gives us the pleasure of Knežević's humor and gravity, and offers moments that soar above the quotidian: “Find yourself a way and be” (“Fado Triste,” 57).
