Mujo Buçpapaj's poetry is revolutionary; it is nourished by intelligence, conciseness, and abstraction
By Sulejman Mato
There are poets who enter the literary scene with great fanfare, seeking attention and media coverage at all costs. And then there are others who quietly build a literary career, indifferent to the media’s hunger for promotion. Mujo Buçpapaj belongs to the latter category—poets who deliberately distance themselves from publicity and the limelight. Even the title of his latest book, The Invisible Victory, seems to encapsulate the message and essence of his poetry—poetry that awaits the day it will be truly understood and revealed as an unknown, unassuming value, standing in opposition to contemporary anti-values.
Mujo’s poetry doesn’t clamor for attention; it moves you with the simplicity of its radiant metaphors.
Those who have followed Buçpapaj’s poetry over the years will notice how, true to his nature, he has built an ascending spiral—both in form and content. The themes he addresses in this book span a wide range of time and space.
They begin in his microcosm—his childhood and birthplace—and resonate outward into the macrocosm, engaging with major contemporary issues, a reflection of the author's intense life and travels over the past decade.
If in his early poems, such as those in I Have My Face in the Rocks, one could feel the raw nature of northern epic mixed with a sensitive spirit new to life, then the hallmark of this new book is its emotional intensity and unity of contemporary modern style.
This poetry asserts itself as part of the best world poetry, especially reminiscent of the American tradition.
It must be said that Buçpapaj’s poetry is no longer easily understood—unless one possesses the necessary knowledge and preparation. It is elite poetry, outside familiar literary frames and clichés. This did not happen by chance. It required time, knowledge, experimentation, culture, and awareness—demands that aim to touch virgin and universal zones of poetry.
A book of over 120 poems, all connected in a visible unity, where surprising metaphors spark light and emotion:
The world was small
With two green feet
At the window
Of water
And the damp wood of the planet.
The years of democracy not only matured and strengthened the author, but also placed him before life’s toughest trials—even at times before the bullets of a dark world.
In one such moment, writing from the white hospital halls, the author addresses his mother:
Dear mother!
It's too late now
And the wounds are heavy on me.
In this pavilion of horror
Hope has not abandoned me.
But you, light a wooden fire
Over this desolate world;
Pray for me in Albanian
Because I am alive
And I don't want to be lost.
Though his poetry is tied with emotional threads to his native village, its people, the epic northern landscapes, greenery, rains, and the sea, each poem is marked with the place where it was written—not only Tropoja, Lukova, and Tirana, but also New York, Washington, Paris, and elsewhere.
This mixture of places and times is vividly reflected in his verse. It is precisely this movement through different times and places that has created the poetic substance of this book.
Among the most beautiful poems, I would highlight a few: Portrait of the Wind, Prekaz 1999, Letter to My Mother, Endless Analogy, After This Long War:
If we don’t return
Once again to Tpla
Light a fire for my dead.
If I truly return
Upon the open wounds of summer
The beds of rain will fall
In the village.
Buçpapaj entrusts the secret of his poetry to the metaphor—this queen of infinite visions.
The well-known American poet and essayist Dana Gioia writes: “Poets are often scholarly beings and every true poem enters with much intelligence and knowledge. But intelligence cannot give life to a poem when emotion or imagination is missing.”
Buçpapaj’s poems generally abide by this principle; they are a harmonious blend of lived material and intelligence, emotion and imagination. Though at first glance his poems may seem hermetic and difficult to grasp, their intellectual content does not overshadow their emotional and imaginative essence—qualities that only a uniquely gifted creator can harmonize.
The sea holds a special place in his poetry. The life of a northerner by the waves of the Ionian Sea has undoubtedly left deep marks in his memory and in his verse.
Children Emerge from the Sea, written recently, is one of the most beautiful poems in the book. Such works embody what can be called a poet’s modern cosmos:
Children emerge from the sea with water on their heads
……………………..
Children emerge from the sea
Like August from summer
With the sun of evening sinking.
Behind them follow the salty wings of rain.
Poetry fed by intelligence, conciseness, and abstraction—these are the hallmarks of modern verse.
Often, in the effort to move away from traditional literary molds and to renew the narrative form of poetry, such poetry risks becoming a slave to “the art of intelligence at its highest use.”
But Buçpapaj’s poetry does not suffer from this. On the contrary, it can serve as a reference point for contemporary criticism, as what is happening in our poetry today echoes what took place in American poetry 50 years ago.
Some of our poets—Moikom Zeqo, Petraq Risto, Agron Tufa, and Mujo Buçpapaj among them—aim to universalize poetry through intelligent abstraction.
I have experienced both types of poetry—closed and open. These two forms do not exclude each other.
Driven by the desire for contemporary relevance, the universalization of poetry has intellectualized the arts, detaching them from traditional descriptive folklore. Today, poetry stands before the dilemmas of imposed change.
In this regard, literary criticism can only illuminate or raise awareness—it is incapable of leading the process.
It is the poets themselves—like Mujo Buçpapaj with his talent and literary experience—who will revolutionize contemporary poetry, bringing it closer to the new reader. In this respect, Buçpapaj’s poetry is revolutionary, drawing the attention not only of readers but also of our literary criticism, which currently lags behind.
Every era brings its novelties.
The 1960s liberated poetry from rhymes and cantilenas, giving rise to free verse.
The 1980s further enriched this trend.
Poets of the 2000s, if we are to classify them this way, lean toward postmodern poetry.
The form with the greatest impact in American poetry over the last decade is the breakdown of poetry-prose boundaries.
Prose poetry is the richest form of free verse because it can carry enormous emotional weight.
Poets today are facing a serious challenge: to rebuild new relationships with the lost reader.
This concern is also present in the poetry of Mujo Buçpapaj.
I believe that poets like Buçpapaj feel this responsibility and have found the key to this success—at both the European and global level.
