The Desert Called America: Poetry of Boris Maruna and American Popular Culture

Ivica Matičević

The Desert Called America: Poetry of Boris Maruna and American Popular Culture

Publication date: 27.03.2018

Studia Litteraria Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis, 2018, Volume 13, Issue 1, pp. 25-39

https://doi.org/10.4467/20843933ST.18.003.8281

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The Desert Called America: Poetry of Boris Maruna and American Popular Culture

Abstract

In the poetry of Boris Maruna (1940–2007), a Croatian modernist poet who is, together with Viktor Vida, considered the best Croatian emigrant poet, one can see the influences of American popular culture of the 1960s and 1970s. By living on three continents – Europe, South America, and North America – and having gained education in Los Angeles, Maruna incorporated into his poetic code some of the fundamental and typical determinants of American cultural and subcultural lifestyle. Fast food, television, film, rock/pop music, cars, freedom of sexual behavior… are some of the adopted forms of American culture that Maruna in his narrative poems both thematizes and advocates, but also questions in an extremely critical way. Irony, humor and strong satire represent the aesthetic aspects by which Maruna reveals the hypocritical, vain, and existential face of the United States of America of that period. On the other hand, like a distant Arcadia, there are landscapes and symbols of the homeland that he abandoned, and the desire to one day return into its physical spaces. However, even the so desired homeland cannot go without critical invectives and poetically ironic comments. Even then, Maruna’s liberal “unadjusted” consciousness makes itself heard, outside all the dictates of expected behavior, thus completely isolating him from the matrix of Croatian emigration poets.

Keywords

modern Croatian poetry, popular culture, irony, Croatian emigrant poetry, sexual liberalism

References

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Information

Information: Studia Litteraria Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis, 2018, Volume 13, Issue 1, pp. 25-39

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4467/20843933ST.18.003.8281

Article type: Original article

Authors

Ivica Matičević

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7904-6113

Chorwacka Akademia Nauk i Sztuk, Zagrzeb, Chorwacja

Published at: 27.03.2018

Article status: Open

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

Percentage share of authors:

Ivica Matičević (Author) - 100%

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English

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