Vasko Popa's [Earth Erect is] based on themes from Serbian history and folklore…. A prevailing pattern is that the poems move to a point where a symbol comes into its own, establishing its truth within the surface reality. 'The Blackbird's Field', for instance, begins as

                   A field like any other
                   a hand and a half of green

and ends as

                     a field like none other
                     Heaven above it
                     Heaven below

Although this is essentially a modern pattern, because in the traditional view there is no separate surface reality, the logic the poems refer back to is the logic of the symbol, and the structural force it has acquired in determining the movement of the poem. Vasko Popa has understood this form of expression so thoroughly that there is very little difference between what the received symbol suggests, and what he himself has created. (p. 110)

Roger Garfitt, "Near and...