Keynote
The updated and expanded edition of this vital anthology, with a new introduction by editor and translator Charles Simic
Book Title
The Horse Has Six Legs
Subtitle
An Anthology of Serbian Poetry
Cover Image
- “This collection of [Simic’s] translations shows both vernacular vigor and sensitivity to the poets’ varied temperaments—grim and laconic, satirically expansive, lyrically embittered, or jocular.”—Publishers Weekly
Body
When The Horse Has Six Legs was first published in 1992, as war and hatred tore through the Balkans, this anthology of Serbian poetry became a landmark for some of the most compelling poetry in the contemporary world. "The ironies, in 1993, of giving an award to Serbian poets will be evident to many," Carolyn Kizer wrote in her judge's citation for the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award. "But the glory of great poetry is that it transcends its time and these agonized events to enter the universal realm of art."
Editor and translator Charles Simic has now updated and expanded this anthology for new readers in the twenty-first century. Simic has brought together an extraordinary range of Serbian poets, from the oral tradition of folk song to the great post-war poets, including Vasko Popa, Ivan V. Lavic, and Novica Tadic, and the new generation of poets writing now. With wild imagination, mordant humor, and vivid surrealism, Serbian poetry is rich, haunted, and intensely relevant to the world we inhabit.
Editor and translator Charles Simic has now updated and expanded this anthology for new readers in the twenty-first century. Simic has brought together an extraordinary range of Serbian poets, from the oral tradition of folk song to the great post-war poets, including Vasko Popa, Ivan V. Lavic, and Novica Tadic, and the new generation of poets writing now. With wild imagination, mordant humor, and vivid surrealism, Serbian poetry is rich, haunted, and intensely relevant to the world we inhabit.
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About the Author
Praise
- “Charles Simic has performed a great service by reminding us, precisely at this moment of turmoil and destruction, that ‘there are still poets and beautiful poems to be discovered and read with lasting pleasure in this vile old world.’”—Stanislaw Baranczak, The New Republic
- “Simic brings an uncanny skill for transforming the poetry of his home country into amazing and unforgettable poems in English.”—The Bloomsbury Review
- “The scope of this anthology is delightfully vast.”—The Prague Post
- “Simic has done much to enhance the reputation of postwar Serbian poetry in the English-speaking world . . . . his vision of Serbian poetry—idiosyncratic, visionary, mythical, ecstatic—is enough to convince me of the richness of his native country’s poetries.”—Pleiades
