Jeffrey Cyphers Wright 

     Stoking the “Keen Forge”

Refuge and Occasion by Vyt Bakaitis

(Lithuanian Writers Union and Station Hill Press, NYC 2022)

Yes, these poems provide refuge, as the title of Vyt Bakaitis’ ultimate poetry collection, Refuge and Occasion (2022), implies. Vyt, in his own words, “makes the cave safe.” And yes, these poems rise to the occasion. Their inner glow illuminates the occasional and the quotidian, so “the cold truth can assert itself.”

Bakaitis flexes the mother tongue in surges and flourishes of lexical prowess, by turns elegant, erudite, New Romantic, and wry. He persuasively pursues the ever-elusive but always-immediate present. He wants “to be more in the living.” The everyday (waiting “in line for the cashier,” “finding the plain word / I may have overheard”) becomes a portal to the profound. We also hear a slant classicism showing harmony and rigor, within a serious understanding of form.

Vyt uses rhyme, assonance, alliteration, enjambment, and meter with surefooted, sublime finesse. “Washed Clean” exhibits all of these in this poem’s first two couplets:

      The daylight cranked out by lamplight

      in a poet's starry rapt study, gazing

      On a prod, a fluke, a prop for daytime

     focus, nor to listen for what you can’t see

He massages the language, coaxing out timeless incantations in a heroic tone. An immediacy emanates from isolated, pinpointed moments. A unity emerges from a mosaic of shards and scenes. Complex yet nimble, the syntax fuses the whole into mythic relief.

In “Scroll Emblem, for Ron Gorchov,” Vyt addresses the trademark scroll-shaped paintings by the artist.

      [. . .] framed out to stake risk

      the lines are naked to a flare

     from a keen forge that’s been

         one on one in regarding

     each ghost face to face [. . .].

“Framed” and “stake” are guideposts to Vyt’s structure and style, both in terms of what he presents and how it is phrased. In “Wish I Knew” he positions himself as a spiritual pilgrim: “I’m framed inside behind mighty doors.” These doors suggest the limits of consciousness that he endeavors to transcend. And he makes us consider the various meanings of stake, ultimately leading to the concepts of value, worth, and preservation.

In “Torn Piece for Anselm Hollo” he foregrounds the idea of framing and staking as elements of form and content—framing a subject and staking it down. He assembles stanzas like snapshots in an album, giving ideas and images a discrete space. Like Gorchov before, the subject here (poet Anselm Hollo) acts as a stationary, inspirational frame.“To frame in mind a fading hymn to peace […] you left us to learn”.

In the poem’s second stanza Bakaitis evokes eternity in a formal yet liberating style. Propelled by improvisational impulse, the lines tumble forth.

      Yank down the banner

        where swallows cavort

           scissoring

      veils in a late haze only too frail to configure

      ever so discreetly or discriminate from the swarm

      muted whiffs of artillery in the blur

        of these cloud puffs

        so light never fails

Lyrical and sonorous, Bakaitis bends the language like a dance partner into grace notes: “pulse turned to music.” There’s magic in them there rills.

No doubt. This crowning work is a masterpiece from a master looking back over life, civilization, survival, love, and human endeavor. Vyt’s mature poems have a double ring, like crystal tapping bronze. The light touch is matched by a canonical monumentality.

*

Vyt passed away this spring and moved into the realm of legend which really begins with his origin story. At the end of WWII, when Vyt was barely four, he and his family fled Russian forces entering his native Lithuania. And they escaped in a German U-boat!

Coming into his own in America, it became clear that Vyt had a poetic gift. Consequently, he became serious about poetry and attended the University of Iowa and its influential Iowa Writers Workshop. After arriving in New York, he became part of the poetry community there and raised a family with the late artist Sharon Gilbert. Notably, he befriended fellow Lithuanian filmmaker and poet, Jonas Mekas, who founded the Anthology Film Archives in the East Village. Vyt began translating his work, resulting in several books.

Black Thistle Editions would publish a collection of the translations, There is No Ithaca (1996). Portable Press at YoYo Labs published a second collection of Vyt’s translations (titled Daybook, 2003). Years later, Rail Editions published a third book of the translations (titled Words Apart and Others, 2018), as well as a tribute book to Mekas, which Vyt edited (called Message Ahead, also in 2018). In 2019, Local Knowledge magazine published a special, dedicated volume (the issue titled A Remembrance, Jonas Mekas) which highlighted Vyt’s translations. Vyt also edited a 20th-century Lithuanian poetry anthology, Gyvas Atodusis / Breathing  Free (Spuyten Duyvil, 2021).

Besides Refuge and Occasion, Vyt’s own poetry volumes include City Country (Black Thistle Editions,1991) and Deliberate Proof (Lunar Chandelier Press, 2010). His work can be found online in The Brooklyn Rail, The Café Review, Eoagh, and Live Mag! He co-edited several issues of a magazine called Thirst with Benjamin Sloan. A career overview can be found online in Nevermore Journal.

Vyt shared his later years with the poet and publisher Kimberly Lyons. Friends, he had many. Enemies, none come to mind. His verse contains boundless meaning, presented with exquisite force. “Every dream has a lookout.”