Table of Contents

Introduction: Kukutis as a Trickster Character / 8 Spending the Night at Kukutis's Farm / 15 The World's Pain in Kukutis's Lost Amputated Leg / 19 Kukutis's Barren Bread / 21 Kukutis's Lament Under the Heavens / 25 And Earth Went Up to Heaven / 27 Kukutis in Forced Labour / 29 Kukutis's Words / 31 Instructions for Kukutis Released from Forced Labour / 33 How Kukutis Regained His Senses / 33 The Story I Came Up With to Cheer Up Hanged Kukutis / 35 The Confusion of Tools, Words, People in the Kukutyne / 39 Kukutis's Swallow's Hymn / 41 Kukutis's Application for Temporary Relief Aid / 43 Kukutis's Sermon to the Pigs / 47 Kukutis, Where Did You Put Your Kukutis? / 51 Many Kukutises and One / 53 Kukutis Wants to See His Homeland / 57 Kukutis Opens His Eyes / 59 Kukutis Drives Fast / 61 How Kukutis Became Estranged from His Consciousness / 63 Forbid Him! / 65 Kukutis's Might / 67 An Experiment / 69 Morning in Kukutis's Cottage / 75 Kukutis and the World's Fair / 77 Kukutis at His Funeral / 83 Kukutis Tells About His Cottage / 85 Night at Kukutis's Farmstead / 89 Kukutis's Last Day / 89 The Women of Zuveliskes Mourn Kukutis / 91 How To Bury Kukutis / 93 Kukutis's Testament / 97 Kukutis's Sorrows on a Dark and Stormy Night / 97 Kukutis Addresses His Life / 101 Kukutis's Sinful Soul / 103 Kukutis Teaches a Child How to Pet a Moose / 107 A Pony in Kukutis's Ear / 109 Kukutis's Old Man with a Tin Awl / 111 Kukutis's Song / 115 Unhappy Kukutis in the Potato Patch / 115 Kukutis Needs a Woman / 117 Kukutis Mourns the Loss of Threshing Machines / 121 Kukutis Avoids Responsibility / 123 Kukutis Gazes at a Stewardess / 125 Kukutis Tells About His Woman / 127 Kukutis's Trip on the Samogitian Highway / 129 Kukutis's Visit to Vilnius / 131 Kukutis Rides a Full Trolleybus / 133 Kukutis Dreams Up Zuveliskes Village in the Cathedral Square / 137 Kukutis's Diagnosis / 143 Kukutis Beats the Agent's Dog / 145 Kukutis's Appeal to the Alphabet / 147 A Last Farewell to Kukutis / 149 Translator's Notes / 152 Biographical Notes / 154

About the Author

MARCELIJUS MARTINAITIS (poet) is the author of fifteen collections of poetry, five collections of essays and a series of three memoirs. In 1998 he was the recipient of the Lithuanian National Award in Literature, the highest honour bestowed upon a Lithuanian writer. Martinaitis was born in 1936 in the village of Paserbentis in geographically and culturally isolated Western Lithuania. He graduated from Vilnius University in 1964 with a degree in Lithuanian Literature. For more than a decade, he worked as a journalist and editor. From 1980 onwards he taught ethnography, literature, and poetry workshops at Vilnius University. He retired in 2002. Martinaitis's work has been translated into English, Estonian, French, Norwegian, Russian, Swedish, and Ukrainian. In addition to his work as a poet, essayist, and educator, Martinaitis is highly respected in Lithuania as a social activist and one of the first members of the Lithuanian grassroots political movement SA'judis. During the late eighties and early nineties, Martinaitis actively participated in Lithuania's struggle to regain independence from the Soviet Union. In 1989 he was elected into the Supreme Soviet and travelled to Moscow to argue Lithuania's cause as part of SA'judis's strategy to work within the Soviet system of governance towards the goal of declaring Lithuania's sovereignty. LAIMA VINCE (translator) is a graduate of Columbia University, School of the Arts MFA program in Creative Writing. She is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, two Fulbright lectureships, a PEN Translation grant, and an Academy of American Poets award, among other honours. Her memoir in diary form of her student years at Vilnius University in 1988-1989 during the time of Lithuania's singing revolution was published in 2008 by the Lithuanian Writers' Union Publishers as Lenin's Head on a Platter. Her novel for children, 'The Ghost in Hannah's Parlour', was translated into Lithuanian and was selected by Lithuanian Radio and Television as one of the top five books published for children in 2007. Laima Vince is the translator of Marcelijus Martinaitis's collection 'K.B. The Suspect', published by White Pines Press. She is also the translator of Juozas Luksa's 'Forest Brothers '(Central European University Press), an account of Lithuania's post-war armed resistance against the Soviet Union. Writing under the name Laima Sruoginis, she is the editor and translator of three anthologies of contemporary 'Lithuanian literature: The Earth Remains' (Columbia University Press), 'Lithuania in Her Own Words' (Tyto Alba), and 'Raw Amber' (Poetry Salzburg). Laima Sruoginis is also the translator of 'My Voice Betrays Me' (Vanda Juknaite, Columbia University Press), 'Just One Moment More' (Columbia University Press), and 'Letters from Nowhere' (Jonas Mekas, Paris Experimental). Laima Vince has published her poems in 'Poetry Daily', 'The Artful Dodge', 'Agni' and other journals. She also writes as a journalist on contemporary social issues in Lithuania.