Latvia Weekly

  Līga Horgana is back with a literature review of  The 1001st Blackish-Blue Night,  a collection of poems by Imants Ziedonis that have been adapted into songs by the musicians of Fonds "Viegli" and translated by Ivars Šteinbergs. Thanks to my middle school student who had discovered a great interest in and passion for the poetry of Imants Ziedonis, I decided to once again write about this author. I had previously described his short prose works, Epiphanies and Fairy Tales , but this time I have turned to his poetry: a very nice collection of song lyrics by the artists of “Fonds Viegli” all based on Ziedonis’s poetry, which was first published in 2017 in the lead up to Latvia’s 100th anniversary. It relates so well with this time of the year when we especially remember our past and celebrate being an independent nation in our own free land. As one musician Māra Upmane-Holšteine says, “Imants Ziedonis is in the Code of each Latvian.” (62) But what makes his poetry so “Latvian