Delimir Rešicki, poet, writer, literary critic, editor of the daily newspaper Glas Slavonije, was born in 1960 in the Baranja region of Croatia. He is one of the leading contemporary Croatian poets and his poems have been included in various anthologies and translated into several languages.
Rešicki’s exceptional talent comes most vividly to the fore when it touches upon the elusive boundaries of sonic and visual effects, revealing his unique perception of language. The main organizing principle operating in his poetry is defamiliarization. This is the procedure he uses in order to organize and maintain a steady rhythm that beats in the background of almost every one of his poems.
Once the sound and visual qualities of his poetic style are fully grasped, it is then possible to approach the inner tempo of his poetry, and to enjoy it. He is a big fan of rock music, and the word goes that he once played drums in an obscure, local rock band that went by the name of the Seagulls. He is a very influential poet. Echoes of his well-known poetic symbols and motifs (pandas, pagodas, dust and the like) can be found in a number of works by younger Croatian poets.
Rešicki claims that the main source of his poetics still comes from early modernism (for example, from the German poet G. Trakl). With his ear tuned to those poetic rhythms, he was able to broaden his poems by drawing on a wide range of quotidian as well as film and rock imagery. Notorious themes from modernist poetry are illuminated and transformed from within to acquire contemporary artistic sensibility.
Sometimes in his poetry he is even inclined to build risky constructions. Elements from other artistic media (movies, paintings) can be found in scenes verging on the bizarre, where – for example – the sinister atmosphere of the paintings of Swiss artist, H. G. Giger, is impregnated with the image of probably the most famous European porn star, Cicciolina, presented as a local sweetheart and heroine.
With his dense, almost tangible poetic sensibility, Rešicki shows how even the most exclusive modernistic manners of expression adopted by so-called ‘high art’ can communicate directly the ephemerality and bathos of our humdrum routines and quotidian experiences.
This is, above all, unusual poetry. Among other things, it reflects everyday life in Croatia, particularly in the eastern region of Slavonia, which during most of the 1990s was enveloped in a dark atmosphere reminiscent of sci-fi horror fantasies; elsewhere the tone is comparable to the melancholy and angst of Trakl’s poetry from the beginning of 20th century. It is a poetry that stands apart from the rest of contemporary Croatian poetry.
Bibliography
Poetry
Gnomi (Gnomes). Quorum, Zagreb 1985.
Tišina (Silence). EPSO, Osijek 1985.
Sretne ulice (Happy Streets). IC Revija, Osijek 1987; Meandar, Zagreb 2000, second edition.
Die die my darling. Quorum, Zagreb 1991.
Knjiga o anđelima (The Book of Angles). Meandar, Zagreb 1997.
Ezekijelova kola (Ezekiel’s Chariot). Znanje, Zagreb 1999.
Aritmija (Arrhythmia). Meandar, Zagreb 2005.
Fiction
Sagrada familia (short stories). Meandar, Zagreb 1993; second edition, 2000.
Essays
Ogledi o tuzi (Essays About Sorrow). Meandar, Zagreb 1993.
Bližnji (Relatives). Matica hrvatska, Osijek 1998.
