A wake for the living / Radmila Lazic ; translated from the Serbian by Charles Simic.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lazić, Radmila, 1949-

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Simic, Charles, 1938-2023.

Standardized Title:

Selections. English & Serbian

Language:

English

Serbian

Subjects (All):

Lazic, Radmilla--Translations into English.

Lazic, Radmilla.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

viii, 123 pages ; 23 cm

Edition:

Bilingual edition.

Place of Publication:

Saint Paul, Minn. : Graywolf, [2003]

Language Note:

Text in English and Serbian.

Summary:

Pulitzer Prize-winner Charles Simic introduces and translates the poems of Serbian feminist, activist, and writer Radmila Lazic "Dead-born will be your wishes."Your every hope will be a widow."And as for love, there won't be enough"To spread on a slice of bread."--from "Twilight Metaphysics" Translated and introduced with the surrealist wit that is Charles Simic's signature, "A Wake for the Living offers American readers, for the first time in English, the brilliance of Serbian poet Radmila Lazic. Through her compelling and strange leaps and dodges, Lazic describes an identity-personal and political-informed by catastrophe and victimization that restlessly and imaginatively swerves into irreverence and often-comic absurdity. "Goodness is boring, " she writes, "It seems it's hell I'm getting myself ready for." These poems careen from the poet's lament for beauty faded to her "Dorothy Parker Blues" to her searching for names among obituaries to her sexual desires without obligation, with the virtuosity that has made her one of Eastern Europe's best and most vivacious contemporary poets.

Contents:

Introduction: Translating Radmila Lazic / Charles Simic vii

Death Sentences 3

From My "Kingdom" 5

Dorothy Parker Blues 7

I'll Laugh Everywhere, Weep Wherever I Can 13

Sorry, My Lord 17

Morning Blues 23

The Meal 27

Winter Manuscript 29

Conjugal Bed 31

The Bliss of Departure 35

Lyric Consequences 41

Ma Soeur 43

Oh, to Be Alone 47

She's Nothing to Look At 49

Sunday 53

I'm an Old-Fashioned Girl 55

Twilight Metaphysics 61

A Woman's Letter 65

The Other One 69

Anthropomorphic Wardrobe 73

Pleasures 77

Goodness 79

Autumn Ode 81

Come and Lie next to Me 83

Summer Song 85

Evergreen 89

Psalm 93

Summer Night: Solitude 95

Minefield 97

Darling 101

The Poems I Write 103

I'll Be a Wicked Old Woman 107

Going to Ruin 111

There, Here 113

My Fellow 117

Last Voyage: New York

Belgrade 121.

ISBN:

1555973906

OCLC:

52919220