Description
An instructive essay by poet and literary-social critic Ales Debeljak opens this introductionn to the rich post-World War II literary tradition in Slovenia. Writers include Edvard Kocbek, whom Charles Simic called one of the truest witnesses of our new dark ages and Tomaz Salamun, who is, according to the New York Times, a major Central European poet; Drago Jancar and Berta Bojetu-Boeta. Also included is a riveting piece by Ivo Standeker, a journalist killed by a Serbian sniper in Sarajevo in 1992.
Reviews

“Zawacki deftly assembles a panorama of viewpoints that provide us with a portrait of a fragmented, troubled, but always dedicated populace… What strikes the reader is the refreshing lyrical moment, that transcendent wellspring of the poet who finds in the world the stuff of beauty and then creates a language to communicate it to us.”

–Multicultural Review

“A generous anthology of poetry, expository prose, and fiction… [with] uniformly intense fiction offerings… A very interesting collection.” –Kirkus Reviews

“Few works can compare with this anthology of Slovenian literature… this book exudes a gentle, civilized, almost Viennese sadness that contrasts with the often harsh subject matter.”

–Library Journal

Description
Dane Zajc (born 1929) is the greatest living Slovenian
poet which is saying a lot in a nation of two million
that emerged out of a disintegrated Yugoslavia and is
full of poets and writers, guardians of spirit and
national consciousness. Zajc, a member of Slovenian
Academy of Arts and Sciences and a laureate of many
distinguished literary awards, has seen a publication
of his work in several European languages. Barren
Harvest is, however, the first comprehensive volume to
appear in English translation, presenting the entire
creative arch of Zajc's vision from early poems to his
mature work. Zajc, a founding father of post-WWII
modernism and a former inmate of communist jails, was
inspired by a political resistance to the dictatorial
regime that gave his work an urgent character and by
aesthetics of existentialism that privileged a raw,
unmediated and sensuously immediate experience. His
poems speak of an profound solitude that is the
destiny of contemporary man, using the vocabulary of
natural world and bodily sensations to illuminate
both, the mortal and lethal aspects of human
condition. This is poetry with of uncompromising
seriousness, propelling the reader into a vertigo of
sinister and evil world which may be redeemed through
the fleeting moments of erotically charged unity with
the cosmic forces and the woman's body. Disturbing,
incantatory, and powerfull, these lyrical visions are
as vital as they are inspiring.
Reviews
" 'And instead of a word/a lump of ashes rolls
down/your blackened throat' says Dane Zajc, by general
consent the greatest living Slovenian poet. Enough is
a line or two of his apophatic power, and you are
there for good. In his landscape, his voice, his
destiny, his beauty. He is a prophet, a seducer, and a
sage. O, you'll be defined, burned, and relieved,
reader. You won't forget him."
-Tomaz Salamun - Four Questions of Melancholy
Accolades

“The first volume of Zajc’s poems available in English, this comprehensive selection shows a maturation from early angry lament to love poems both lush and consuming. Although Zajc’s poetry invokes war and its aftermath, it is not reportage. Rather, it is witness of a sort, to an emotional life, resplendent with shadows and the relentless thrust of the earth to continue with its harvestings and sowings.”

– Forward Magazine

“Zajc… is… considered to be one of the greatest Slovenian poets and an important Central European modernist… Translator Erica Johnson Debeljak has done a smooth job of bringing Zajc’s poems into English.” – Rain Taxi

Description
Carneci is a widely acclaimed Romanian poet, essayist and art critic, and one of the most innovative and important poets to emerge from Eastern Europe. Chaosmos reflects a world that is chaotic on a local level, but cosmically ordered on a larger scale, a “carnival of sensory images, strong emotion, and brilliant intellect,” according to Fiona Sampson.
Reviews

Description
Ferida Durakovic refused to leave Sarajevo when the bombs began to fall. Having seen her home and library bombed, she invokes in her poems the icons and myths of a troubled people caught between the two dominant religions of Europe. The first English-language collection by one of Bosnia’s most promising young poets shows us how when the world is narrowed by guns, one’s field of reference widens so much that everything hurts.

Description
Forty poems and one essay by the left-wing schizophrenic Hungarian poet who committed suicide by throwing himself under a train.
Reviews
"I have long thought of Attila Jozsef as one of the great poets of the century’s tragic realist whose work beautifully redeemed the unbearable conditions of the life to which history condemned him. These new translations will be welcomed."
-Donald Justice

Description

Immigrant writer Novakovich records his journeys to
find his roots, some to his native Croatia, some no
farther than Cleveland, where he searches for the
grave of a grandmother, who refused to return to Croatia with the rest of the family. This collection reflects the joys and difficulties in returning to a homeland left behind.

There are, according to Novakovich, "four and a half million Croats in Croatia and an equal number in diaspora around the world." Although he emigrated to the U.S. at the age of twenty, Novakkovich frequently returns to Croatia, which he calls the strongest source for his writing. These essays document journeys he and his family have taken back to his homeland throughout the years, Immigrant writer Novakovich records his journeys to find his roots, some to his native Croatia, some no farther than Cleveland, where he searches for the grave of his grandmother, who refused to return to Croatia with the rest of her family. This moving collection reflects the joys and the difficulties in returning to a homeland left behind.

Josip Novakovich is the author of Yolk, Apricots from Chernobyl, and Salvation and Other
Disasters.

Reviews

"Novakovich is a strong, original writer. His subtle prose makes me beam with pleasure, and break into an anxious sweat at the same time. He has mastered the tone of bearing witness as a principle of moral literature."
-Philip Lopate, The Art of the Personal Essay

 

 

 

“Plum Brandy: Croatian Journeys mixes autobiographical writing, biographical sketches, travelogue, and journalism as it attempts to give a more personal insight into the past and present realities of that country, It is a rewarding read.”

 

—Gordana Crnkovic - Slavic and East European Journal

 

Accolades

“Novakovitch… is the insider/outsider looking in, and what he provides is… the best portrait of contemporary life in the new Croatian nation… To read this volume is to understand something of the mystery of the Balkans that has always intrigued the West.”

– Multicultural Review

“Novakovitch is a collector, with his ear to the ground. He misses nothing, and these essays are, line by line, so rich with dialogue and description, with perceptiveness and character, you can only wonder how he will ever manage to tell all the stories. It is a kind of genius, this gift for gathering, this ability to grasp the essential elements of situation, story and person.”

–Chicago Tribune

Description

Vasko Popa was one of the great post-World War II European Poets. Building on surrealist fable and traditional folk-tale, personal anecdote and the tribal myths of his Serbian homeland, he created one of the most original poetries of the twentieth century. Cosmic in setting, his work seeks nothing less than taking the comic blunderings, tragic sufferings and senseless ironies of human experience and loosing them like endless dreams throughout an indifferent universe. 

 

 “As Popa penetrates deeper into his life, with book after book, it begins to look like a Universe passing through a Universe. It is one of the most exciting things in modern poetry, to watch this journey being made.”

—Ted Hughes

 

 

 “Poets have the gift to speak for others, Vasko Popa had the very rare quality of hearing the others.”

—Octavio Paz

 

 

 

Accolades

 

Vasko Popa (1922-91) was born in Vrsac in the Serbian Banat. He was elected to the Serbian Academy in 1972 and the Académie Mallarmé in Paris in 1977. He lived in Belgrade where he worked as an editor for the publishers Nolit.

 

 

Morton Marcus published ten volumes of poetry and one novel, including The Santa Cruz Mountain Poems, Pages From A Scrapbook of Immigrants, When People Could Fly, Moments Without Names: New & Selected Prose Poems, Shouting Down The Silence: Verse Poems 1988-2001 and  Pursuing The Dream Bone. His latest book is Striking Through The Masks: A Literary Memoir.