Vasko Popa

Vasko Popa (born June 29, 1922, Grebenac, Serbia, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes [later Yugoslavia]—died Jan. 5, 1991, Belgrade, Yugo.) was a Serbian poet who wrote in a succinct modernist style that owed more to French surrealism and Serbian folk traditions than to the Socialist Realism that dominated Eastern European literature after World War II.

Popa fought with a partisan group during World War II and then studied in Vienna and Bucharest before completing his education at the University of Belgrade (1949). He took a job as an editor in Belgrade, and in 1953 he published his first major verse collection, Kora (“Bark”). His other important work included Nepocin-polje (1956; “Field of No Rest”), Sporedno nebo (1968; “Secondary Heaven”), Uspravna zemlja (1972; Earth Erect), Vučja so (1975; “Wolf’s Salt”), and Od zlata jabuka (1958; The Golden Apple), an anthology of Serbian folk literature. His Collected Poems, 1943–76, a compilation in English translation, appeared in 1978, with an introduction by the British poet Ted Hughes.