New European Poets

Big Frank has been reading a wonderful collection of poetry: New European Poets. It includes 290 poets from every country in Europe. It also gives a good sampling of the broad scope of styles found in European poetry today: lyric, prose, political, historical, and surrealistic to mention just a few. It is not only testomony to the new poetry of Europe, but also to the great numbers of poetic translators working to bring us this. Here is a recent review of the book. And here are a few of Big Frank's favorites:

Lost Friends

Friends carried off by life

are the most difficult to appease, the most

tyrannical. barbarians of an unknown land,

they sip the poison of silence and they grow

beyond all limits in the distance, a blind eye

to our loneliness. And to think that we were

brothers in arms, that we dug up buried treasure

from the same islands, from the most

barren of books. How things turn out.

Could all have been in vain? It seemed

that we were destined for the same

songs, for a more certain kind of love,

Well, well. and we cannot even understand

what happened.

---Rui Pires Cabral (translated from the Portuguese by Alexis Levitin)

Dark Thoughts

I'm almost like that dark hallway

with a few framed photos

and lamps on the walls.

So many visitors have walked through me,

dark and light,

depending on the illumination.

---- Regina Derieva (translated from the Russian by Valzhyna Mort)

.

[Evenings, when the light dims]

Evenings, when the light dims

and I lie hidden in bed,

I gather outlines of ideas

that flow over the silence of my limbs.

It's here I must weave

thought's tapestry,

arrange my own strands

use myself to draw my own figure.

This isn't't work

but workmanship.

Of the page, then of the body.

To evoke thought's form,

measure and fit it.

I think of a tailor

who is his own fabric.

.

---- Valerio Magrelli (translated from the Italian by Anthony Molino)