Black soup / Sutardji Calzoum Bachri

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This volume contains a selection of poems by one of Indonesia's greatest contemporary poet, Sutardji Calzoum from his earliest writing in the mid-sixties to his most recent . It is introduced and translated from Indonesian by Harry Aveling. His earliest work shows him to be a lyrical poet, concerned with the gentler aspects of nature and of human desire. In the mid-seventies, much of this gentleness began to fall away and his attitude changed to one of viewing the world as a place of alienation and grief, the process of death is ongoing from the moment of birth, and human intimacy is impossible because of the unwillingness of individuals to renounce egotism. Sutardji wrote little during the eighties. The pieces here present a new, more Muslim Sutardji. His poems are on Islam and political corruption.