Neringa Abrutyte- Critics Say

Neringa Abrutytė

Neringa Abrutytė (b. 1972 in Neringa) is a poet. She studied Lithuanian language and literature at Vilnius University. She made her debut in 1995 with Autumn of Paradise (Rojaus ruduo), a collection of poetry. She later published two books of poems: Confession (Iš pažintis) (1997) and By Neringa M. (Neringos M.) (2003). In creating her “non-poetry” – syntactically abridging sentences, transforming affirmatives into questions, shortening words – Abrutytė consciously frustrates the literary tradition. The predominant genre of her work is, in the author’s words, “unlyrical” love poetry.
The young author’s work has been translated into the Belarusian, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, Greek, and Italian languages. Collections of her poetry were published abroad in 2003 – in Slovenia (Izpoved) and in Denmark (Fingre).
The poet lives in Vilnius.Authors’ VoiceTo write poetry is to feel and remember images rising up to the sentimental surface of subconsciousness, to look at the very bottom of your soul; sometimes there are stones, sometimes flat sand, but you always sink and come to the surface again to get air (inspiration).

Critics’ Say

The most important thing to Neringa is not her experiences, but the living, pulsating organism of language. Not poetic ornamentation and complicated imagery, but the breathing rhythm of each word, sentence, and even syllable. Why does Abrutytė’s voice stand out so markedly in the chorus of Lithuanian poets – and especially female poets? Maybe she misses the note more often? Maybe instead of having a good voice she just crows, prickles, and repeats herself? It would be too simple to imagine her as a naive primitive splashing about in a spray of language and producing the occasional pearl. Abrutytė has chosen an opposing “creation from nothing” strategy – using her fingernails to scratch words down to the live bone of language instead of thinking up poetic experiences on her own. That’s why we see repetition, not metaphor; fragments of conversation, not soundbites; the everyday, not myth. It’s a more Brechtian position – to keep ironic distance from the “lyrical subject”. Neringa isn’t afraid to lodge that “subject” in awkward situations and trip up its sentimentalism (“The Seamy Side of the Text”). Or to dive into the current of language with surrounding reflections and domestic details.
Laima Kreivytė // Klėja, 2003, No. 8

Bibliography

Iš pažintis (Confession) : [poems]. Vilnius: Lithuanian Writers’ Union Publishers, 1997. 61 pp.
Neringos M. (By Neringa M.) : [poems]. Vilnius: Lithuanian Writers’ Union Publishers, 2003. 83 pp.
Rojaus ruduo (Autumn of Paradise): [poems]. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 1995

Source: Books from Lithanian