A wake for the living
By: Radmila Lazić ; translated from the Serbian by Charles Simic.
Contributors: Simic, Charles, 1938-
Edition: Bilingual ed.
Publisher: Graywolf
Published: 2003
Place of publication: Saint Paul, Minn
Language: eng; srp
Number of pages: 123
Subjects: Lazić, Radmila, 1949- -- Translations into English.
Genres: Translations into English.
Description: Translated and introduced with the surrealist wit that is Charles Simic's signature, this book 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.--Publisher description.
Notes: Parallel Serbian and English text.
"The poems in this collection come from the original Serbian publications: Price i Druge Pesme (KOV, 1998), Iz Anamneze (RAD, 2000), and Doroti Parker-Bluz (in manuscript)."--T.p. verso.
"A Lannan translation selection"--T.p. verso.
Table of contents: title: One: Death sentences; title: From my "kingdom"; title: Dorothy Parker Blues; title: I'll laugh everywhere, weep wherever I can; title: Sorry, my Lord; title: Morning blues; title: The meal; title: Winter manuscript; title: Conjugal bed; title: The bliss of departure; title: Two: Lyric consequences; title: Ma Soeur; title: Oh, to be alone; title: She's nothing to look at; title: Sunday; title: I'm an old-fashioned girl; title: Twilight metaphysics; title: A woman's letter; title: The other one; title: Anthropomorphic wardrobe; title: Pleasures; title: Goodness; title: Autumn ode; title: Come and lie next to me; title: Summer song; title: Three: Evergreen; title: Psalm; title: Summer night: solitude; title: Minefield; title: Darling; title: The poems I write; title: I'll be a wicked old woman; title: Going to ruin; title: There, here; title: My fellow; title: Last voyage: New York-Belgrade.