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1993–2002: From the Gariūnai Market to the Frankfurt Book Fair
Rimantas Kmita
The dreams of the "Gariūnai era" and the elegance of essays
 
Following the euphoria of the Sąjūdis national reform movement and the great hopes and dreams it inspired, the literary world, like the cultural community overall, gradually began to acclimate itself to more prosaic conditions of life (and survival). Literature seemed to find itself thrust into the center of a market place bustling in the trade of used Western cars, counterfeit designer clothing, and pirated audiocassettes. One literary critic and lecturer had this to say to his graduating class in 1993:
 
I would use the following metaphor to describe the situation facing today’s student of the arts: a violin player in a tailcoat playing Vivaldi’s sonatas at the Gariūnai Market. He appears strange and alien. Strange, because he looks different than the majority, and alien, because he doesn’t conform to that majority. Albertas Zalatorius, Literatūra ir laisvė, Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 1998, p. 81.
 
Many cultural figures were in a state of shock after finding that economic censorship was no less fierce than its ideological cousin. A growing crisis in literature was one of the most important issues being discussed in society in the early 1990s. Professor Viktorija Daujotytė had the following response to a question posed in 1997 by Benediktas Januševičius about the literary crisis:
 
I believe there were signs of a crisis in our literature and in our culture. Precisely during that critical period. When the stability of our artificially crafted world collapsed, the material foundation, that most important element, also collapsed. Publishing became more difficult as a result. The number of people employed in literature, especially in literary criticism, dropped quite suddenly. To be sure, the number of books also decreased. I believe we’ve reached a turning point now, however, and we no longer have what could be called a crisis situation. „Krizė, ištikusi literatūros krizę“. Su Vilniaus universiteto profesore Viktorija Daujotyte-Pakeriene kalbasi Benediktas Januševičius, Literatūra ir menas, 1997 01 18, p. 3.
 
For many writers, the loss of stature in society was a painful experience, while others sought out new solutions, getting used to genres of popular literature, and attempting to learn and grow accustomed to life as a professional writer—an occupation no different than any other.
 
Read more: Diverse Popular Literature.
Literary critic Jūratė Sprindytė wrote at the time that "the image of a new type of professional—the writer—is emerging. Before, a professional writer was someone supported by the state, and a member of prestigious commissions, presidiums and editorial boards. Now, it means a prolifically writing person with a diversity of life’s experiences: as a translator, critic, humorist, or journalist, writing prose, poetry, or essays for adults as well as adolescents." Jūratė Sprindytė, „Tarp amžinybės ir tuštybės“, Literatūra ir menas, 1997 01 04 Poet Vladas Šimkus added that a writer’s versatility does not emerge from a life of ease. Vladas Šimkus, „Literatūros pokyčių laikai“, Metai, 1997, Nr. 2, p. 152.
 
New publishing houses appeared ("Alma littera" and the Lithuanian Writers’ Union publishing house in 1990, "Baltos lankos" in 1992, and "Tyto alba" in 1993), while an increasing number of periodical publications offered new opportunities for professional writers making a living from their craft. Such writers, loyal to one publishing house and attempting to survive from their writing, included Ričardas Gavelis, Jurga Ivanauskaitė, and Juozas Erlickas—all collaborators with "Tyto alba", and Sigitas Parulskis, who began his career as an in-house writer for "Baltos lankos" who later moved to "Alma littera".
 
Nevertheless, the number of writers living solely from earnings received from works of fiction could still easily be counted on one hand. According to a sociological survey conducted in 2000, "72 percent of writers indicated that income from creative pursuits did not exceed 25%, and they were the only category of Lithuanian artists in which not even a single percent [of respondents] said they could survive solely from their literary work. Only 8 percent said that they could make a living from their creative work by “supplementing” it with some other activity, while the remainder claimed that creative work was only a supplement to their main source of income received from other work." Loreta Jakonytė, Rašytojo socialumas: lietuvių rašytojų savivoka XX amžiaus 10-ajame dešimtmetyje, Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas, 2005, p. 92.
 
The circulation of cultural journals continued to shrink, as did their influence in public life. Contemplating literature became relevant for the cultural press alone, which meant that writers were discussing their craft within an almost completely closed circle. People began speaking of a developing syndrome of "writing into the void", with that void consisting of literary critics and a handful of members of the “literary class”. Mindaugas Kvietkauskas is convinced that “for a poet who is honest with himself (and not self-important), the feeling of a 'void' comes not from the absence of positive reviews or awards, but from a sense of loss of contact with one’s audience." Mindaugas Kvietkauskas, Elena Baliutytė [ir kt.], „1998-ųjų poezija: kokia ji buvo?: svarstymai“, Metai, 1999, Nr. 4, p. 77.
 
Heralds of the nation who roused the people to action during the Sąjūdis years had become ordinary citizens whose income often forced them to balance on the threshold of ruin. As if that weren’t enough, there were now plenty of declarative statements of disassociation from any (cultural) elite status—one of the most notable coming from writer Jurga Ivanauskaitė. „Esu žmogus – ir tiek“. Jurgos Ivanauskaitės ir Ritos Kubilienės pokalbis, Literatūra ir menas, 1993 07 17. For some, this was a cause for concern—for others, it brought joy and relief expressed with self-consoling overtones:
 
Until very recently, becoming a writer in Lithuania meant about the same thing as becoming a priest did at the start of this century. […] Books that once were a sign of middle-class taste are now equated to the price of sausage or cheese, and we’d much rather now line our shelves with videocassettes of action movies, pornos and other such lovely things. Literature has simply lost its earlier (unhealthy) level of universal significance—something that should be celebrated. The masses have finally thrown off the myth of The Writer, thereby automatically liberating the writer as well: he is now alone with himself, with his own conscience, desires and talent. „Esu žmogus – ir tiek“. Jurgos Ivanauskaitės ir Ritos Kubilienės pokalbis, Literatūra ir menas, 1993 07 17.
 
Literary critic Vytautas Kubilius summarized the first decade of Lithuania’s restored independence thus: "The sacred plateau upon which the poet once stood, holding the heavens aloft, is no more. Now, he speaks immersed in the dense stuff of the routine." Vytautas Kubilius, „Daiktavardėjanti poezija“, Metai, 2000, Nr. 3, p. 79–90.
 
Prakeiksmas (The Curse), a poem by Alvydas Šlepikas, might be a graphic description of the place of the poet and writer in society:
 
The Curse
(A monologue by the poet’s wife)
 
Take your damned lyricism, you ass
Take all your damned iambi and trochees
All your grammar
Your naked children go barefoot
Their eyes red and hungry
what did you get from poetry
but alcoholism and the clap?
Take your damned tears, you ass
and your entire fucking family
all your rondeaux
all your snack bars
and hamburgers, all your Literas
contorted and squinting you are
drunk and reeking
why stand there like Lenin
you self-gnawing worm?
Damn you to hell
did you at least
buy your son a bicycle
you scum?
(Waving him off and turning away.)
Murder would be too good for you.
 
The first decade of independence was marked by a cultural depression—by signs of self-contempt and dissatisfaction over an imminent cultural apocalypse, or, in the best case, with attempts to console one another that everything was as it was meant to be.
 
Circulation is as high as it needs to be; the size of audiences at literature readings is exactly as big as it needs to be; there is no—and never was any—public discourse with literature, nor is one necessary. Society is not a collective farm, and writers are not collective farm chairmen. It’s enough to listen to the lines of verse that ‘society’ dedicates to its loved ones at [televised] dedication concerts to understand that one illiterate scribbler would be enough to fulfill society’s wildest desires. Sigitas Parulskis, Atsakymai į anketą „Literatūra ir visuomenė“, Metai, 1995, Nr. 4.
 
Mindaugas Kvietkauskas responded to the situation with his text Nenoriu neobaroko (I Don’t Want the Neo-Baroque): "I keep looking within our literature and press for a brave and renaissance perspective, one that is finally confident in itself. I don’t want the Neo-Baroque." Mindaugas Kvietkauskas, „Nenoriu neobaroko“, Metai, 2001, Nr. 2, p. 114.
 
Translated foreign literature was a positive counterweight to the decline in the numbers of books and professionals working in the creative field. Atviros Lietuvos Fondas (Open Society Fund Lithuania), financed by American philanthropist George Soros, began to support the comprehensive publication of books on cultural history, contemporary philosophy, as well as works by select Lithuanian authors. The Fund established a foundation for the intellectual renewal of Lithuanian culture. Over a fairly short period, classical works from various eras and movements on philosophy, anthropology, political science and history became a critical part of university education programs. These included, among others, works by Heraclitus, Plato and Aristotle, Mircea Eliade, Johan Huizinga, Simone de Beauvoir and José Ortega y Gasset, Leszek Kołakowski, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jean-François Lyotard and Michel Foucault.
 
Editorial Team of the weekly newspaper Literatūra ir Menas (Literature and Art), 1996
Photograph: Dž. Barysaitė
Jurga Ivanauskaitė picketing for the Independence of Tibet, 1994
Photograph: V. Ščiavinskas
J. Ivanauskaitė, Ragana ir Lietus (The Witch and the Rain), Vilnius: Vaga, 1993
The Frankfurt Book Fair
 
After a period of roughly one decade, Lithuanian literature was pulled from the margins of the Gariūnai Market and thrust into the center of attention of the world’s largest book fair. In 2002, Lithuania participated at the international Frankfurt Book Fair as the designated Guest of Honor. The Fair was also a good opportunity to assess the state of Lithuanian literature and to test its vitality within a European context by taking a look at itself with the eyes of an outsider, surveying which direction it should proceed in the future. The Book Fair resulted in a new confidence in Lithuanian literature and its potential, and bolstered a feeling of belonging to a European, not post-Soviet, cultural space, a fact emphasized by then Lithuanian Minister of Culture Roma Dovydėnienė during her remarks at the opening of the Fair’s Lithuanian pavilion:
 
I think it is most important to stress that Lithuania always was, and always felt like, a character in a larger, enduring story. A story called Europe. „Vietoj redaktoriaus žodžio“, Knygų aidai, 2002, Nr. 3, p. 1.
 
A boom in translations had already begun in Lithuanian literature before the Frankfurt Book Fair. Both contemporary and historical literary works were translated into various languages. (Ukrainians even translated into their language the long-forgotten novel Sukilėliai [Rebels], by Vincas Mykolaitis-Putinas). Most of these translations were successfully organized by the public enterprise Lietuviškos knygos (Lithuanian Books), whose mission was to promote Lithuanian literature abroad. Lithuania’s participation in the Frankfurt Book Fair was a success—the German press was full of positive reviews. In the words of Egidijus Aleksandravičius, a historian who participated in events at the Fair, "the Guest of Honor made a most wonderful appearance, intriguing the professional audience with her versatility, sharp political discussions, excellent organizational discipline, and her ability to understand what she was talking about, and with whom she was speaking." Egidijus Aleksandravičius, „Frankfurto knygų mugė ir politinis folkloras: pakeltkojis“, Literatūra ir menas, 2002 10 18, p. 2. Individual authors also had beneficial outcomes. Jurga Ivanauskaitė, for example, spent five hours of each day in interviews, and the entire 8,000-copy run of her novel Ragana ir lietus (The Witch and the Rain) was sold out before the Fair even opened.
 
The Frankfurt Book Fair was the crowning moment in the creative careers of authors who had dominated Lithuanian literature in the final decade of the 20th century.  At the same time, the year of the Fair also marked the start of a period in which Lithuanian literature also lost some of its most talented and mature writers. Judita Vaičiūnaitė died in 2001, Nijolė Miliauskaitė in March, 2002, Ričardas Gavelis died in August and Jurgis Kunčinas in December of that same year. Gintaras Beresnevičius passed away in 2006, Jurga Ivanauskaitė in 2007, Sigitas Geda in 2008, and Juozas Aputis in 2010. After the loss of authors who had laid the foundation for the literature of a newly independent Lithuania and who had been examples of adaptation to new times, talk again began to circulate about another crisis in literature and a void in the cultural realm. By coincidence, a new generation of writers was just beginning to appear on the scene—authors who were reaching their literary maturity in an independent Lithuania and who had no experience of a writer’s life lived under a different political regime. It was entirely natural, then, that these writers had a different view of their role in society and of literature itself.
 
Authenticity’s forms and the elegance of essays
 
Speaking about literary trends after 1990, critic Jūratė Sprindytė has written that “the first decade was a time of filling in so-called blank spots and the rise of  innovation.” „Svarstymai. Du lietuvių literatūros nepriklausomybės dešimtmečiai“. J. Sprindytės, L. Jonušio, V. Kukulo, M. Kvietkausko, V. Rubavičiaus ir R. Tamošaičio pokalbis, Metai, 2010, Nr. 3.  As in the first years of the Lithuanian political reform movement, the removal of these blank spots was accomplished through the continued publication of memoirs. Though with reduced circulation, memoirs written by partisan freedom fighters and former deportees to Siberia continued to appear in print. Attention increasingly turned to publications written by diaspora authors. Works by émigré and exiled writers constituted the bulk of literary production at the time, since Soviet-era literature appeared morally and aesthetically bankrupt. The world of Lithuanian literature saw a return of names that had been struck from public discourse in the Soviet period, including Tomas Venclova, Icchokas Meras, as well as works by émigré literary critics and cultural scholars (Rimvydas Šilbajoris, Vytautas Kavolis, Marija Gimbutienė, Algirdas Julius Greimas).
 
The publication of the diaries of filmmaker Jonas Mekas (in 2000) and poet Alfonsas Nyka-Niliūnas (two volumes were released in Chicago in 1998 and 1999, and reprinted in expanded editions in Vilnius in 2002, 2003, and 2009) were major literary events. The public’s longing for authenticity and for legitimate diaries was understandable: under the Soviet regime, keeping diaries in one’s desk, let alone publishing them, was an extremely risky proposition. For this reason, Justinas Marcinkevičius’ widely popular Dienoraščiai be datų (Undated Diaries) is really more of a series of journalistic commentaries on life and cultural issues. Authors avoided keeping real diaries. There was hardly a riskier thing than openness in the Soviet period. The most notable diaries to be published during this time—by Vytautas Kubilius (2006, 2007) and Marcelijus Martinaitis’ Tylintys tekstai: užrašai iš raudonojo sąsiuvinio, 1971–2001 (Silent Texts: Entries from the Red Notebook, 1971–2001), were testimonies of caution: Kubilius wrote his journal entries on small slips or A4 paper torn by hand into quarters (perhaps made to appear as notes for future articles or random annotations), his handwriting barely legible—probably intentionally so. (The painter Vincas Kisarauskas also wrote his own diary in extremely small print for the same reason). Ironically, in an attempt to avoid the attention of wandering eyes, Martinaitis kept his notes on fine stationary bound in a red notebook sold to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Youth League—each diary entry perhaps a small attempt to wound and overcome the system.
 
The craving for authenticity could also explain the success of novels by Jurgis Kunčinas (Tūla, published in 1993) and Leonardas Gutauskas (Vilko dantų karoliai [A Wolf-Teeth Necklace]), released in three parts in 1990, 1994, and 1997) that were based on autobiographical details and their authors’ memories, as well as the considerable attention attracted by Janina Degutytė’s responses to questions posed by Viktorija Daujotytė (Atsakymai: nebaigta autobiografija [Responses: An Unfinished Autobiography], 1996), and later—the popularity of the proze by Laura Sintija Černiauskaitė, Danutė Kalinauskaitė, Renata Šerelytė, and Valdas Papievis.
 
Read more: A Homecoming for Literature, "Vilko dantų karoliai" (A Wolf Tooth Necklace) by Leonardas Gutauskas, Jurgis Kunčinas, Tomas Venclova, Icchokas Meras, Marcelijus Martinaitis, Vincas Kisarauskas, Stories about Emotions, Poetic Prose, Renata Šerelytė, Valdas Papievis.
 
By the end of the 1990s, however, Jūratė Sprindytė was already asserting that the authentic writing model, at least in prose, was long out of fashion. In the critic’s view, the combination of “deep, authentic, constructive” was retreating in favor of another trio: "playful, fictional, eclectic", to which Sprindytė added a fourth attribute: "superficial". Jūratė Sprindytė, „Literatūrai stabilizuojantis?“, Literatūra ir menas, 1999 02 20, p. 4. 
 
Post-modernist prose appeared on the scene fairly early, but it remained on the sidelines. In his 2001 study Dioniso sugrįžimas: chtoniškumas, postmodernizmas, tyla (The Return of Dionysus: Chthonianism, Post-Modernism, Silence), Eugenijus Ališanka lists the post-modern Lithuanian writers, all of whom he can count on the fingers of one hand: Herkus Kunčius, Valdas Gedgaudas, Marius Ivaškevičius, and Ramūnas Kasparavičius. Other critics included Jurga Ivanauskaitė and Ričardas Gavelis in that list. Today, we could easily add to it Paulina Pukytė, Undinė Radzevičiūtė and Jaroslavas Melnikas, as well as Castor&Pollux literary criticism project. What was missing, though, was not so much a collection of post-modernist prose, but a sufficient audience for it. Post-modernist prose was often equated with pornography, obscenity, or any form of "an undermining of values"—particularly by the more senior generation of writers.
 
Read more: Tragicomic Art "from Life", An Elegantly Ironic Ousider, Constructive Illogicality or Postmodern Allegories, Castor&Pollux.
Such change following the lifting of censorship was entirely predictable. A more surprising phenomenon of the 21st century’s first decade was the emergence of elegant essays against the backdrop of political literature and the entertainment press of the "Gariūnai Era". The socially aware author appealing to the nation's consciousness was replaced by the individualist, the dandy, and the loafer or by intellectuals capable of mesmerizing their readers with unexpected insights. The opportunity to be subjective became so attractive that essays began to be written by authors who had previously specialized in the most diverse fields: poet and playwright Rolandas Rastauskas, poets and literary critics Vaidotas Daunys, Valdemaras Kukulas, Vytautas Rubavičius, Sigitas Geda, Donaldas Kajokas, Sigitas Parulskis, religious scholar Gintaras Beresnevičius, art historian Alfonsas Andriuškevičius, journalist Gintarė Adomaitytė, and culturologist Almantas Samalavičius. Giedra Radvilavičiūtė, who premiered as a writer in the essay genre and continues writing in the field, believes the flourishing of the Lithuanian essay derives from its relevance to the mindset of contemporary readers:
 
[They wrote] with the senses and with neuroses, with exhaustion, without any forced ideals, without openly exploited emotions, without any poeticisms to highlight the beauty of our native language or dialecticisms incomprehensible to thousands of young people, without any bluntly stimulated anguish over any ‘correctly’ understood good fortune or the meaning of life, or sorrow over the decay of a rural lifestyle or for the narrator, and in the language of the street and with references to other works of art, to current events, and with a sense of irony and distance. Giedra Radvilavičiūtė, „Apie esė... skaitiniai“, Šiaurės Atėnai, 2006 03 25.
 
The contagious appeal of a “mixed”, undefined genre, made enticing because of its personal approach, soon influenced other genres: reviews, novellas, and poems. And in 2002, authors from the bastion of the Lithuanian essay, the cultural journal Šiaurės Atėnai, published a collective "novel" of essays they called Siužetą siūlau nušauti (I Recommend Shooting this Story Line).
A. Nyka-Niliūnas, Dienoračio fragmentai, 1938–2009
J. Mekas, Žmogus be Vietos. Nervuoti Dienoraščiai, (I Had Nowhere to Go), Vilnius: Baltos Lankos, 2000
M. Martinaitis, Tylintys tekstai: užrašai iš raudonojo sąsiuvinio,1971–2001 (Silent Texts: Entries from the Red Notebook, 1971–2001), Vilnius: Lietuvos Rašytojų Sąjungos Leidykla, 2006
S. Geda, S. Parulskis, G. Beresnevičius, A. Andriuškevičius, G. Radvilavičiūtė, Siužetą Siūlau Nušauti (I Recommend Shooting this Story Line), Vilnius: Baltos Lankos, 2002
Gintaras Grajauskas reading poetry at the closing event of “Poetry Spring” at Vilnius University, 1994
Photograph: I. Dmuchovskaja
Kornelijus Platelis, Kęstutis Nastopka, Druskininkai Poetic Fall, 2001
What is (and is not) poetry?
 
The core of Lithuanian poetry consisted of work written by established writers or authors who had debuted their work in earlier years, mainly Sigitas Gida, Vytautas P. Bložė, Jonas Strielkūnas, Judita Vaičiūnaitė, Donaldas Kajokas, and Nijolė Miliauskaitė, among others.
 
One could say that the entire tradition of Lithuanian poetry played itself out in the works of Aidas Marčėnas.
 
The first Lithuanian poets to influence me were Sigitas Geda and Tomas Venclova, and from the universe of younger writers – Donaldas Kajokas and Antanas A. Jonynas. Later, I discovered Gintaras Patackas (I liked his force and his muscular way of speaking). […] Almis Grybauskas was always interesting, but he wasn’t entirely my type of poet, though he did write the most beautiful poem of the late twentieth century. Edmundas Kelmickas, meanwhile, appeared on my horizon sometime later. […] Perhaps also Kornelijus Platelis’ "hexametric ruins." „Likau XX amžiaus žmogus“. Autobiografinė ekskursija. Liudvikas Jakimavičius kalbina Aidą Marčėną, Literatūra ir menas, 2010 03 05.
 
Daiva Čepauskaitė was also among those writers who combined classical forms with playfulness, intonations of conversational speech, and a sense for existential absurdity. Poets Rimvydas Stankevičius ir Gintaras Bleizgys, both influenced by Marčėnas, could be mentioned here as well.
 
Read more: Daiva Čepauskaitė, Sigitas Geda, Vytautas P. Bložė, Jonas Strielkūnas, Judita Vaičiūnaitė, Donaldas Kajokas, Nijolė Miliauskaitė, Aidas Marčėnas, The Young Rebellion: Gintaras Patackas, Antanas A. Jonynas, Almis Grybauskas, Poetocentric Poetry.
1994 was clearly a defining year in the Lithuanian avant-garde tradition. The almanac Svetimi (Strangers) appeared (with contributions from Liutauras Leščinskas, Donatas Valančiauskas, Dainius Dirgėla, Valdas Gedgaudas, Alvydas Šlepikas, and Evaldas Ignatavičius), and publishers re-released Ir mirtis nebus nugalėta (And Death Shall Not Be Defeated), a collection of poems by Algimantas Mackus. That same year saw the posthumous release of a collection of poetry by Antanas Kalanavičius, Ne akmenys guli  (Stones Don’t Lie There) that Swiss professor Jan Peter Locher has called an exceptional work in the overall context of the European avant-garde, and Sigitas Geda published one of his most memorable poetry collections, Babilono atstatymas (Rebuilding Babylon). Also in 1994, Sigitas Parulskis released Mirusiųjų (Of the Dead), arguably one of the best collections of Lithuanian poetry, in which he dramatically disassembles and buries the agrarian Lithuanian world view and painfully reveals the emptiness and depletion of the traditional ways and rituals of life. Gytis Norvilas ir Benediktas Januševičius have creatively continued the neo-avantgarde poetic tradition to this day.
 
Read more: Neo-avant-gardism in Contemporary Lithuanian Prose.
At the same time, poetry was engaged in a search for alternatives to a highly developed, metaphorical Aesopian language and for appropriate means to express its shifting status in society. Gone were the times of popular literary evenings, akin to high holy masses, when the public waited in anticipation for new poetry, and no one expected poetry to continue to speak in references to historical or political truths.
 
The poet had become mortal, positively simple, just "like everyone else." Eugenijus Ališanka, „Pasakojimo sugrįžimas“, Literatūra ir menas, 2000 06 02.
 
Literary critics such as Vytautas Kubilius  Vytautas Kubilius, „Daiktavardėjanti poezija“, Metai, 2000, Nr. 3, p. 79–90.and Brigita Speičytė  Brigita Speičytė, „Nepoetinis eilėraščio menas. Posovietinės lietuvių poezijos linkmės“, Metai, 2009, Nr. 1, p. 86–98.began to speak of a material poetry that employed metonymy as one of its prevailing stylistic tools. Metaphorical Aesopian language yielded to the narrative, history, and to everyday and recognizable experiences. Poets did not hesitate to employ catalogues of objects (as in Gintaras Grajauskas’ 1997 collection of poems Katalogas [Catalogue]), static poetic imagery, photographicity, or realism. Some ways of metonymic speech (epic and prosaic language, a poem’s plot structure, or domestic, routine and intimate aesthetics) had already begun taking shape much earlier, but now they had become a predominant trend. According to Regimantas Tamošaitis, in the contemporary poetry of young poets "all rights have been ceded to material objects, to details and minutia. [Their] speech is not such much metaphorical or ‘leaning’ toward mythological thinking, as it is metonymic, prosaic, and descriptive. Their relationship with the world, with themselves and their poetry, is indifferently ironic." Regimantas Tamošaitis, „Poetinis Druskininkų ruduo 2002“, Metai, 2002, Nr. 11, p. 150–152.
 
Ričardas Šileika was perhaps the most radical in his attempts to repudiate subtext and "depth" in his poetry. He not only wrote poems that imitated the chronicling of everyday events, he also published "eavesdroppings" and citations, collecting and exhibiting interestingly shaped pieces of iron called geležėlės. The very use of conversational language and the "overhearing" of phrases spoken in local dialects is its own form of adapting the ready-made aesthetic to poetry. Benediktas Januševičius used poems to interpret postage stamps, labels, and other objects.
 
The poet who questioned the concept of traditional poetry and provoked the greatest response to her work, however, was Neringa Abrutytė. By publishing her first collection of poems in 1995 (Rojaus ruduo [The Autumn of Paradise]), she virtually leapt directly from secondary school into literary textbooks. To this day, her playful, ironic, intertextual (but not referential) post-modernist poetry is either relegated to the sidelines of discussion by reviewers, or it occupies the center of a principled debate about the essence of poetry itself. Trends espousing playful postmodernism as well as authenticity and a documentary style have also continued in the works of the younger generation of individualists.
 
All of this demonstrates that the shifting of boundaries and canons of poetic genres continues today. More and more often we hear the question posed: what is, "and what is not poetry" (the theme of the 2011 Druskininkai Poetic Autumn).

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Bibliography

Jurga Ivanauskaitė
„Esu žmogus ir tiek”
Literatūra ir menas, 1993 07 17
Loreta Jakonytė
Rašytojo socialumas: lietuvių rašytojų savivoka XX amžiaus 10-ajame dešimtmetyje
Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas, 2005
Mindaugas Kvietkauskas, Elena Baliutytė [ir kt.]
„1998-ųjų poezija: kokia ji buvo?: svarstymai.“
Metai, 1999, Nr. 4, p. 77
Mindaugas Kvietkauskas
„Nenoriu neobaroko“
Metai, 2001, Nr. 2, p. 114
Vytautas Kubilius
„Daiktavardėjanti poezija“
Metai , 2000, Nr. 3, p. 79-90
Sigitas Parulskis
„Nauja žodžio mitologija lietuvių literatūroje; arba pastebėjimų apie kūrėjo ir kūrinio būklę dabartinėje Lietuvoje kratinys“
Metmenys, 1993, Nr. 65, p. 167
Jūratė Sprindytė
„Tarp amžinybės ir tuštybės“
Literatūra ir menas, 1997 01 04
Vladas Šimkus
„Literatūros pokyčių laikai“
Metai, 1997, Nr. 2
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