The author has not divided the material into cycles. He could justifiably rely on the unique and direct effect of the poems, on their ability to reinforce the message by the sequence of them.
We have been preparing for the publication of Attila Botár's poetry booklet What Are You Up To, Stars? since the beginning of 2019, as we had already got acquainted with the manuscript in 2018 and the editing was at an advanced stage.The poetry book was awarded a grant by the National Cultural Fund. It was ready for the cover to be finished and printed when at the beginning of August we had to face the devastating news that Attila Botár had passed away.
In the days before the grant was awarded Attila Botár asked us to ask László Hegyeshalmi to create the cover artwork. The reason for this request was that they had been good friends for decades and László Hegyeshalmi had also designed the cover of his previous book, The Isotopes of the Situation. A portrait of the author in a mourning frame was inserted in the volume of Unselected Poems. An editorial obituary has been inserted after the poems.
The material with its farewell atmosphere is not a posthumous volume in the traditional sense. It is not, because a peculiar Botar serenity pervades almost all of it, and because the poet who has lived to be seventy-five has already written his earlier books in a summing-up, contemplative tone. Attila Botár has once again provided us with a new series of poems which are philosophical, elegiac and all the poems in the volume are a hit. Although he operates with several poetic forms, it is gratifying that we also get a convincing taste of the sonnet he so masterfully crafted: he has given us twenty-six fourteen line sonnets out of eighty-five.
Castle Street Workshop Books 55 - Veszprém
The book is sponsored by the National Cultural Fund
