After the war in 1949, Popa graduated from the Romanic group of the Faculty of Philosophy at Belgrade University. He published his first poems in the magazines Književne novine (Literary Magazine) and the daily Borba (Struggle).
From 1954 until 1979, he was the editor of the publishing house Nolit. In 1953 he published his first major verse collection, Kora (Bark). His other important work included Nepočin-polje (No-Rest Field, 1956), Sporedno nebo (Secondary Heaven, 1968), Uspravna zemlja (Earth Erect, 1972), Vučja so (Wolf Salt, 1975), and Od zlata jabuka (Apple of Gold, 1978), an anthology of Serbian folk literature. His Collected Poems, 1943–1976, a compilation in English translation, appeared in 1978, with an introduction by the British poet Ted Hughes.
On 29 May 1972 Vasko Popa founded The Literary Municipality Vršac and originated a library of postcards, called Slobodno lišće (Free Leaves). In the same year, he was elected to become a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.[2]
Vasko Popa died on 5 January 1991 in Belgrade and is buried in the Aisle of the Deserving Citizens in Belgrade's New Cemetery.[3]
He was a good friend with French poet Alain Bosquet.
Popa was married to Jovanka "Hasha" Singer from his post-war move to Belgrade in the 1940s until the end of his life. In 2001, a year after her death, Hasha’s ashes were interred alongside Vasko’s remains.[4]
Style
Vasko Popa wrote in a succinct modernist style that owed much to surrealism and Serbian folk traditions (via the influence of Serbian poet Momčilo Nastasijević) and absolutely nothing to the Socialist Realism that dominated Eastern European literature after World War II. He created a unique poetic language, mostly elliptical, that combines a modern form, often expressed through colloquial speech and common idioms and phrases, with old, oral folk traditions of Serbia – epic and lyric poems, stories, myths, riddles, etc. In his work, earthly and legendary motifs mix, myths come to surface from the collective subconscious, the inheritance and everyday are in constant interplay, and the abstract is reflected in the specific and concrete, forming a unique and extraordinary poetic dialectics.
In The New York Times obituary, the author mentions that the English poet Ted Hughes lauded Popa as an "epic poet" with a "vast vision". Hughes states in his introduction to Vasko Popa: Collected Poems 1943-1976, translated by Anne Pennington, "As Popa penetrates deeper into his life, with book after book, it begins to look like a universe passing through a universe. It is one of the most exciting things in modern poetry, to watch this journey being made."[5]
Mexican poet and Nobel laureate Octavio Paz said, "Poets have the gift to speak for others, Vasko Popa had the very rare quality of hearing the others."
Popa's Collected Poems translation by Anne Pennington with its introduction by Hughes is part of "The Persea Series of Poetry in Translation," general editor Daniel Weissbort. Premiere literary critic John Bayley of Oxford University reviewed the book in The New York Review of Books and wrote that Popa was "one of the best European poets writing today."[6]
Since his first book of verse, Kora (Bark), Vasko Popa has gained steadily in stature and popularity. His poetic achievement – eight volumes of verse written over a period of 38 years – has received extensive critical acclaim both in his native land and beyond. He is one of the most translated Serbian poets and at the time he had become one of the most influential World poets.
Legacy
Popa on a 2022 stamp of Serbia
In 1964, composer Darinka Simic-Mitrovic used Vasko Popa's text for her song cycle Vrati Mi Moje Krpice.[7]
In 1995, the town of Vršac established a poetry award named after Vasko Popa. It was awarded annually for the best book of poetry published in Serbian. The award ceremony is held on the day of Popa's birthday, 29 June.[8]
Works
Poetical oeuvre
Kora (Bark), 1953
Nepočin polje (No-rest Field),1965
Sporedno nebo (Secondary Heaven), 1968
Uspravna zemlja (Earth Erect) 1972
Vučja so (Wolf's Salt), 1975
Kuća nasred druma (Home in the Middle of the Road), 1975
Živo meso (Raw Meat), 1975
Rez (The Cut), 1981
Gvozdeni sad (Iron Plantage), unfinished
Collections oeuvre
Od zlata jabuka (Apple of Gold), a collection of folk poems, tales, proverbs, riddles, and curses selected from the vast body of Yugoslav folk literature, 1958
Urnebesnik: Zbornik pesničkog humora (Pealing Man: Collection of poetic Humour), a selection of Serbian wit and humor, 1960
Ponoćno Sunce (Midnight Sun), a collection of poetic dream visions, 1962
Major literary works available in English
Vasko Popa (NYRB Poets), selected and translated by Charles Simic (NYRB, 2019), ISBN 978-1681373362
