ABSTRACT
As I step out of the Pri Makru Hotel, I try to erase memories from my mind so I can see Ljubljana anew. Will the Slovene capital be as lovely and invigorating as I recall? Six years ago, I spent a week in the city and often felt, as Meta Kušar (b. 1952) puts it in her collection, Ljubljana, that those days were “more here than others.” I had returned home to France enthusiastic about a town whose quality of life—in terms of daily pains and pleasures—seemed high and whose intellectual climate was intense. I had filled my suitcase with the work of unusual and stimulating poets who were much less known abroad than Tomaž Šalamun (b. 1941), the only Slovene poet whom, like most Americans, I had read until then.
