translated christopher merrill (2 risultati)

1st printing. Arresting prose-poems about life in Slovenia. Mint copy. Publisher feedback card laid-in. 5-1/2 x 8-1/2, 78 pp. Fine unmarked, no spine creases. Trade Paperback in b/w auhor-photo wraps.

Softcover. Condizione: Like New. Inscribed by Translator "26 March 1994 For Karen - More.Christopher Merrill". Written over a year before civil war broke out in the former republic of Yugoslavia, this introduction to English-speaking readers of a poet highly acclaimed in his homeland cannot help but be read in light of recent events. With a haunting sense of urgency and prophecy, the speaker searches "the depths of memory" for "destroyed villages you wanted to forget." Indistinct himself, the speaker's landscape is peopled with shadows. A cigarette butt, a littered street, an open window or a doorstep suddenly take on epic proportions. The dominoes children play with are "made from the bones of animals." Rain inexplicably seems to presage an earthquake. Absorbed within these highly evocative landscapes, man at first seems to be at war with nature; as page piles on page, we begin to realize it's man at war with man, with nature caught in the crossfire. But man does have a choice, Debeljak tells the reader, in what also seems an attempt to convince himself. While these seven lyrical prose-poem sequences have a travel theme, the emotional climax comes in the book's last three sections: here men can stay or go; each is responsible for his own fate. Readers, by this time hanging on the speaker's every word, are left mercilessly on the precipice. Signed by Significant Other.