New European Poets

Tasked with representing European poets who began publishing after 1970, poets and editors Miller and Prufer recruited 24 regional editors—including Marilyn Hacker (Belgium, Luxembourg, France and Switzerland) and Rika Lesser (Finland and Sweden)—to select and translate 270 contemporary versifiers. The resulting anthology—designed to emphasize poets not already well represented in English—is sure to be a boon to all kinds of poetry lovers and an important reference for decades to come. From Valzhyna Mort of Belarus (“Outside your borders/ they built a huge orphanage,/ and you left us there, belarus”) to Poland's Adam Wiedemann (“Imagine a situation where it never occurs to you/ to think of any other situation”), Norway's Cathrine Grøndahl (“...the most frightening thing is simply/ to be named John Doe and to land in Smalltown”) to Portugal's Rui Pires Cabral (“Great city/ of the missing, so often I didn't have/ the vigor to take pleasure in/ your small, deserted/ gardens”), these poets range from the surreal to the all-too-real, portraying decades of sweeping political change throughout Europe and rendering inner lives shaped by circumstances and places as varied as the languages in which they write. American readers are sure to find many new favorites among those included, and they may even find their whole conception of contemporary European literature upturned. (Apr.)