Then Touch Me Here

His verses alarm the reader, drop hints, at times spout an aphoristic maxim, and not infrequently fade away into incoherent muttering -- as he adds at the end of some poems, when lightning and thunderclaps have rolled over the reader's head and the poet-shaman, no longer in a trance, comes to his senses in a world whose simplicity and hopelessness can best be expressed by the song of a bird or the rapping of a stick on wood. -- Poet Karlis Verdins in Latvian Literature. then touch me here consists of selections from his fourth and fifth books of poetry -- uzvari man kaut ko parejosu (cook up something transitory for me, 2003) and Putn' (Bird', 2008).