Child of nature
By: Luljeta Lleshanaku ; translated from the Albanian by Henry Israeli and Shpresa Qatipi.
Contributors: Israeli, Henry, 1967-; Qatipi, Shpresa.
Publisher: New Directions Pub.; New Directions
Published: February 25, 2010
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 93
ISBN-13: 9780811218474
Subjects: Lleshanaku, Luljeta -- Translations into English
Genres: Translations into English
Work titles: Fëmijët e natyrës.
First sentence: Darkness has not yet fallen/ and from a neighbor's yard/ comes a hammer's pounding--/ the apiary mended for winter's hibernation.
Description: A fresh voice from the Balkans and an award-winning poet from Albania, Lleshanaku explores her country’s past in intense and powerful lyrics. Lleshanaku belongs to the first “post-totalitarian” generation of Albanian poets. Child of Nature is her second poetry collection available in English. Here she turns to the fallout of her country’s past and its relation to herself and her family. Through intense, powerful lyrics, she explores how these histories intertwine and influence her childhood memories and the retelling of her family’s stories. Sorrow, death, imprisonment, and desire are some of the themes that echo deeply in Lleshanaku’s beautiful poems, poems that Peter Constantine has called “contemporary classics of world literature.” Of her work, Albanian novelist Ridvan Dibra writes, “When you close her book, the images don’t leave you. They cleave you open like a leopard’s paw, and enter into you. Once inside they create their own life, a second life, vastly different from the original.”
Notes: "A New Directions Book."