April

Mindaugas Grigaitis
www.kamane.lt, 2007 04 05

Kęstutis Navakas. Photo by A.Barzdžius

In brief: Who loves K.Navakas? The question is worth a million. One reviewer stated once that K. Navakas is most loved by K.Navakas. Also, K. Navakas and his texts are loved by other Lithuanian writers, especially poets, and this love is mutual. This love is openly shown in the first poem of the newest book of K. Navakas “From Mustard and Horseradish of Life” (V., LRS, 2007) called “A Song about the Writers’ Union”.

The poet and writer talks in a subtle manner, teasing and flirting a little. K.Navakas loves observing colleagues and describing them in a snappy manner. Meanwhile, they revenge to him by creating real or imagined legends about Navakas. However, a virtuoso of poetical language does not necessarily have to be a masterful creator of comic effect.

The book “From Mustard and Horseradish of Life” which is variegated in genre (it includes parodies of poems, songs, dramas and letters) is united by the attempt to speak in a playful and ironic style, which is close to the earlier book “Chronicles of Good Life”. The works have been written on the basis of the first inspiration: the poet looks at the reality and creates a picture of colourful mosaic in his imagination. The newest book is most probably the rest of the poet from “serious poetry”, thinking and philosophy or it is a search for new creative pleasure.

However, even though the poet enjoys this search himself, it is hard for him to attract the reader to the process. It is believable that Navakas is trying to parody the post-modern poetry and strives to prove that lyrics may be produced from everything and in any way in the new book. Still, parodying writers who write anything, the author identified with amateurs himself too much and placed his new book on the border of amateur writing.