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An Interview with Czeslaw Milosz

  An Interview with Czeslaw Milosz | Czesław Miłosz and Nathan Gardels | The New York Review of Books An Interview with Czeslaw Milosz Czesław Miłosz and Nathan Gardels February 27, 1986 issue The following interview with Czeslaw Milosz took place in Berkeley, California, in August 1985 . The East NATHAN GARDELS: Your poems are very popular today in Poland. Why is poetry so important there? CZESLAW MILOSZ: At moments of cataclysm and upheaval, poetry becomes popular as the expression of the people’s hope, aspirations, and identity. In such moments, poetry is the most expressive voice of freedom. Also, poetry has been popular in Poland for centuries. On the other hand, maybe there are some very down-to-earth reasons. In the Europe occupied by the Nazis, poetry was the most handy instrument of moral resistance because you could copy a poem and pass it from hand to hand. Prose was too long and difficult for this purpose. So there are various reasons, historical and practical. G: In P...

On Szymborska: Czesław Miłosz

On Szymborska Czesław Miłosz November 14, 1996 issue I have been saying that Polish poetry is strong and distinguished upon the background of world poetry by certain traits. Those traits can be found in the poems of a few eminent Polish poets, including Wislawa Szymborska. Her Nobel Prize is her personal triumph but at the same time it confirms the place of the “Polish school of poetry.” Perhaps it is not necessary to recall that the language of that poetry is the language of a country where the crime of genocide was perpetrated on a mass scale. Links between the word and historical experiences can be of various kinds, and there is no simple relationship of cause and effect. And yet a certain fact is not without significance: Szymborska, like Tadeusz Rozewicz and Zbigniew Herbert, writes in the place of the generation of poets who made their debut during the war and did not survive. What does the poetry of Szymborska, marked as it is by such a lightness of touch, skeptically smiling, ...

Kẻ Xa Lạ

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  Bức hình trên thuộc về hành trang tị nạn của Gấu, cùng với bức hình Thượng tọa Thích Quảng Đức, gỡ ra từ một bức tường trong một căn phòng dành cho khách vãng lai tại ngôi chùa Long Vân Tự, tại Parksé, Lào, trong khi chờ qua sông Mekong, tìm đường vô trại tị nạn. Gầu vẫn cứ nghĩ, Gấu có nó, từ một Quán Đen ở Vạn Tượng. Mãi sau này, coi lại, thấy đề năm 1993, lúc đó mới biết, lấy từ thư viện Pháp ở trong trại Panat Nikhom, Thái Lan. Kẻ Xa Lạ là một trong những bài viết được đọc nhiều nhất của Tin Văn * Kertesz Đồng Vọng cho Hồn Thiêng Lò Thiêu Đọc Kertesz Diễn Văn Nobel Trang Kertesz J'ai subi un deuxième choc littéraire en 1957, quand « L'étranger », d'Albert Camus, a été traduit en hongrois. Pour moi, c'était une révélation décisive qui m'a radicalement influencé dans mes choix.. [Tôi bị cú sốc văn chương thứ nhì khi Kẻ Xa Lạ được dịch qua tiếng Hung, vào năm 1957. Đây đúng là một cú mặc khải ảnh hưởng tới sự chọn lựa của tôi] Bữa nay mẹ tôi mất Kẻ Xa Lạ của nhà...

Elizabeth Bishop’s Other Art

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Elizabeth Bishop’s Other Art William Benton This year is the centenary of the birth of Elizabeth Bishop, one of the most celebrated figures in American poetry, and several new collections of her prose, poems, and correspondence have been published to commemorate it. Her work is a widely recognized force in American poetry. Far less known is that Bishop was also an accomplished artist. March 9, 2011 Collection of Loren MacIver Elizabeth Bishop: Daisies in Paintbucket . Watercolor and gouache, 10½ x 9½ inches. Used as the jacket illustration for One Art: Letters . The lyrical, semi-abstract array of flowers–in short strokes and freely drawn delicate lines–fans out over the paint bucket, which is placed dead center and as far front as possible. It has the aplomb of a masterpiece. This year is the centenary of the birth of Elizabeth Bishop, one of the most celebrated figures in American poetry, and several new collections of her prose, poems, and correspondence have been published to comm...