Description: "In Called by Distances, her fifth collection of poems, Biljana D. Obradoviâc looks back at a life that includes surviving the demise of her native country from civil war, the loss of her parents in the same year, and displacement from Hurricane Katrina. Her poetry reflects on loves and deaths, travels from New Orleans to other parts of the world, and adjusting to American culture, often accompanied by a feeling of not belonging anywhere. She examines these experiences through poems that draw on all her roles-as a woman, a lover, a writer, a teacher, a mother-creating a portrait of an artist who struggles to persevere, despite life's setbacks. Written mostly in free verse or with established forms, Obradoviâc's poems witness negative aspects of history, the loss of distant family members, natural disasters, and the Covid pandemic. As in "The Dream that Keeps Returning," where she writes, "They blend / I can't hide. I don't blend," Obradoviâc resists the call merely to assimilate, and instead carves her own, unique path, across the distances, continuing to dream"-- Provided by publisher.
Brief description: Biljana D. Obradovic is a Serbian-American poet, translator, critic, and professor of English at Xavier University of Louisiana. She has published collections of original poems, including Little Disruptions, poetry translations, and anthologies of work by contemporary Serbian writers.
Review Quotes: "Called by Distances travels through New Orleans and around the world in poems that gain their lyric impulse through narrative exactitude. 'We had to wear masks, not for romance / but to protect ourselves from the invisible, ' writes Biljana D. Obradovic, who commits to writing it as she sees it so we might see what is not there! This book is one of a kind."--Jericho Brown