Okay now, I gotta tell you about a book. The title is Otobiografi (or Autobiography in English). Wait up! It’s not time for you to draw a conclusion. No. Not yet. It’s not an autobigraphy in the conventional sense of this word. It’s not even a memoir. This is a poetry anthology of Saut Situmorang. FYI, Saut Situmorang is quite a controversial contemporary Indonesian poet. He’s controversial in terms that he is more well-known as a harsh-critic of a major Indonesian cultural pocket Komunitas Utan Kayu led by a senior poet Goenawan Mohamad. Saut shows an open opposition to Goenawan and all around him.
Well, back to Otobiografi, this poem is unique in two ways. First, it is the first poem in Indonesia whose write declares himself adhere to the so-called intertextuality, the notion that a certain work is in any way related with texts that precede it. A text is judged in the light of other texts that precede or succeed it, that’s how T.S. Eliot put it less than a century ago. Continue reading »
