Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Charles Simic introduces and translates
one of Serbia's most important contemporary poets
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Charles Simic has done more than anyone
since Czeslaw Milosz to introduce English-language readers to the
greatest modern Slavic poets. In Oranges and Snow, Simic continues
this work with his translations of one of today's finest Serbian poets,
Milan Djordjevic. An encounter between two poets and two languages, this
bilingual edition-the first selection of Djordjevic's work to appear in
English-features Simic's translations and the Serbian originals on
facing pages. Simic, a native Serbian speaker, has selected some
forty-five of Djordjevic's best poems and provides an introduction in
which he discusses the poet's work, as well as the challenges of
translation.
Djordjevic, who was born in Belgrade in 1954, is a poet who gives equal
weight to imagination and reality. This book ranges across his entire
career to date. His earliest poems can deal with something as
commonplace as a bulb of garlic, a potato, or an overcoat fallen on the
floor. Later poems, often dreamlike and surreal, recount his travels in
Germany, France, and England. His recent poems are more autobiographical
and realistic and reflect a personal tragedy. Confined to his house
after being hit and nearly killed by a car while crossing a Belgrade
street in 2007, the poet writes of his humble surroundings, the cats
that come to his door, the birds he sees through his window, and the
copies of one of his own books that he once burnt to keep warm.
Whatever their subject, Djordjevic's poems are beautiful, original, and
always lyrical.
