Edin Viso is a man at home in exile. At home in the alternating chaos and confusion, warmpth and beauty of the inner city; and at home with the oscillations of his own heart. Edin’s poetry and prose bear the obvious marks of dark drama—of a soul variously splayed apart and cinched back together. He has poured out ink and has let it seek out the dimmer gorges of his heart. And he has thrown ropes of words, high up over the peaks of hope.
This is a book of psalms—at once craggy and rough as the Balkan landscape, and sublime as sunrise on the Aegean Sea. There are calluses on the palms, dried blood on the knuckles, and dirt under the fingernails of these pieces. And there is grace. There are poems that veer close to the edge of despair, then without warning shoot skyward in sudden delight. And there is gratitude and humour.
A reader will find herself unexpectedly smiling at the comic shadow of a jester, and then reclining beside a grand and open heart that still anticipates discoveries on an unfinished journey. Edin’s is now a Christian journey, but a journey unclouded by Christian platitudes; one that skewers absolutism; that stakes everything on love; and prefers the company of vagrant souls who entertain possibility and wring cheer from graffiti on bus seats and truth from brown leaves in gutters. Edin is a poet who knows the value of a blanket, a single orange, a moment shared—this moment. He is a man who is unafraid, and who does, in the pages [of Balkan Tattoo], “take off his skin and dance in his bones.”
—Stephen T. Berg, from the Foreword
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