To Love, To Wonder: The Poetry of Sitor Situmorang

The 1953 publication of Sitor Situmorang’s “Green Paper Letters” pegged him as a rising poet. Six decades later, the writer was still active. The more than one hundred poems in this book were selected from the several thousand he wrote. The main characteristics of Sitor’s poetry is the simplicity of its wording and the clarity of its syntax. Sitor’s poetry is a poetry of words; they evoke concepts and call up a series of pictures and images. In his poems, we found a poignant blend of personal experience and philosophical reflection.