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Poesía
Esta selección de los poemas publicados por Popa a lo largo de 35 años presenta al lector de habla hispana una de las más sonoras voces de la lírica de nuestro tiempo. El "Imprólogo" de Octavio Paz que abre esta muestra es saludo y descripción, evocación y memoria de un gran poeta y su obra.
- GenresPoetry
Paperback
First published January 1, 1969
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
July 29, 2025
He halts in a clearing
Yellow and secluded
Stone after stone he milks
Gives his wolves to drink
The thick stone-milk
That mirrors the seven colors of the rainbow
This collection gave me assurances while I sat at the dentist. One needs those, although this was definitely a situation where I would have loved it to be a bilingual edition. Alas I keep absolute faith in Charles Simic. Many of the selections feature the absurd or the childish. Most others are dominated by St. Sava or the lame wolves of pre-Christian Serbia. There are digressions on the social life of pebbles and whether orphans experience prayer in a normative manner.
Yellow and secluded
Stone after stone he milks
Gives his wolves to drink
The thick stone-milk
That mirrors the seven colors of the rainbow
This collection gave me assurances while I sat at the dentist. One needs those, although this was definitely a situation where I would have loved it to be a bilingual edition. Alas I keep absolute faith in Charles Simic. Many of the selections feature the absurd or the childish. Most others are dominated by St. Sava or the lame wolves of pre-Christian Serbia. There are digressions on the social life of pebbles and whether orphans experience prayer in a normative manner.
July 12, 2018
In his lovely eyes
Sorrow has closed
Into a circle
For the road has no ending
And he must drag behind
The whole world
---
On the edge of the pavement
At the end of the world
The yellow eye of loneliness
---
Out of each pain
Which we do not mention
A chestnut tree grows up
And remains mysterious behind us
Out of each hope
Which we cherish
A star arises
And moves unattainable in front of us
Sorrow has closed
Into a circle
For the road has no ending
And he must drag behind
The whole world
---
On the edge of the pavement
At the end of the world
The yellow eye of loneliness
---
Out of each pain
Which we do not mention
A chestnut tree grows up
And remains mysterious behind us
Out of each hope
Which we cherish
A star arises
And moves unattainable in front of us
July 14, 2018
Only in sleep
We walk the same paths
*
He hides in his forgetting
We walk the same paths
*
He hides in his forgetting
September 21, 2021
"Nisam više tu
S mesta se nisam pomerio
Ali tu više nisam.."
S mesta se nisam pomerio
Ali tu više nisam.."
October 6, 2019
"You had no proper father
Your mother wasn't at home
When you saw the world in yourself
You were born by mistake
You have the figure of an abandoned abyss
There's a smell of absence about you
You gave birth to yourself"
Your mother wasn't at home
When you saw the world in yourself
You were born by mistake
You have the figure of an abandoned abyss
There's a smell of absence about you
You gave birth to yourself"
February 13, 2023
Ce poet minunat! Mi-a plăcut enorm poezia lui Vasko. Are o naturalețe aparte.
January 29, 2019
"What does the drop of blood want in the corner of heaven
In that one-eyed corner of heaven"
-- from "An Intruder"
"And one of my wrinkles as path
And one of my lashes as guide
To bring you home"
-- from "Fugitive Stars"
"Stoop down naked if you can
To my last letter
And follow in its steps"
-- from "Orphan Silence"
"Kiss my echo"
-- from "Give me back my rags"
In that one-eyed corner of heaven"
-- from "An Intruder"
"And one of my wrinkles as path
And one of my lashes as guide
To bring you home"
-- from "Fugitive Stars"
"Stoop down naked if you can
To my last letter
And follow in its steps"
-- from "Orphan Silence"
"Kiss my echo"
-- from "Give me back my rags"
August 19, 2013
I really liked it. Especially: Give me back my rags.
April 16, 2014
I need one more star! Amazing, just amazing poet. One of the best! Introduction by Ted Hughes and translation by Anne Pennington.
July 19, 2015
4.5 stars. Vasko Popa is an excellent wordsmith. Recommending this to everyone who wants a dash of something different in their poetry menu.
September 9, 2015
Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan, listen.
May 25, 2017
The game continues at a lively pace
As long as there are arms
As long as there are legs
As long as there is anything
აგრეთვე ძალიან საინტერესო და ლამაზი.
უანს აფონ ე თაიმ...
As long as there are arms
As long as there are legs
As long as there is anything
აგრეთვე ძალიან საინტერესო და ლამაზი.
უანს აფონ ე თაიმ...
April 11, 2019
This is a little book I've carried around with me from country to country and town to town for almost 50 years now. I don't know why it has taken me this long to spend some real time with it. Maybe I had to grow into the idea of this kind of gentle surrealism, but I'm not sure.
Nobody quite knew what to do with the early Simic poems, the ones he was publishing in the 60s. They didn't know how to categorize them, since they weren't like the French surrealists. I remember someone even calling those lovely little poems about lights inside stones and forks becoming chickens as "American surrealism." Well, now we know exactly where those poems and that kind of perception came from! VAsko Popa!
The series this was published in -- Penguin Modern European Poets -- was the first to introduce many of us to that whole generation of people. I think I have Herbert, Holub, Montale in this series. They had good translations, and the whole series was edited by A. Alvarez (yes, Sylvia Plath's lover), and this volume is brilliantly introduced by Ted Hughes. He does a good job establishing the context in which we can read Popa, and points out the way to read those sequences of short poems, all creating a certain vision and the terms of that vision, then building through each small poem. That's really helpful. But, of course, the Hughes intro is interesting when we think about all he had gone through in the few years just before he wrote it. That adds a whole new meaning to much of it, a biographical meaning. The translations by Anne Pennington are uncluttered and never seem to get in the way of the reading. Of course, I have no way of evaluating the originals, but these probably do justice to them.
The poems make leaps, but make them very simply, placing demands on the reader, but also in their quiet way, letting the reader know he's not really supposed to "get it." He should just go along for the ride. That is part of the explanation for why this is called "folkloric surrealism." There's an emotional liberty that comes through these poems. I ride with them, or at least I do now. I had to become an old man to read these poems! If I'd gone this far into them when I was 25, when I already owned the book, I think I might have spent years trying to imitate them! That might have been a good thing.
Nobody quite knew what to do with the early Simic poems, the ones he was publishing in the 60s. They didn't know how to categorize them, since they weren't like the French surrealists. I remember someone even calling those lovely little poems about lights inside stones and forks becoming chickens as "American surrealism." Well, now we know exactly where those poems and that kind of perception came from! VAsko Popa!
The series this was published in -- Penguin Modern European Poets -- was the first to introduce many of us to that whole generation of people. I think I have Herbert, Holub, Montale in this series. They had good translations, and the whole series was edited by A. Alvarez (yes, Sylvia Plath's lover), and this volume is brilliantly introduced by Ted Hughes. He does a good job establishing the context in which we can read Popa, and points out the way to read those sequences of short poems, all creating a certain vision and the terms of that vision, then building through each small poem. That's really helpful. But, of course, the Hughes intro is interesting when we think about all he had gone through in the few years just before he wrote it. That adds a whole new meaning to much of it, a biographical meaning. The translations by Anne Pennington are uncluttered and never seem to get in the way of the reading. Of course, I have no way of evaluating the originals, but these probably do justice to them.
The poems make leaps, but make them very simply, placing demands on the reader, but also in their quiet way, letting the reader know he's not really supposed to "get it." He should just go along for the ride. That is part of the explanation for why this is called "folkloric surrealism." There's an emotional liberty that comes through these poems. I ride with them, or at least I do now. I had to become an old man to read these poems! If I'd gone this far into them when I was 25, when I already owned the book, I think I might have spent years trying to imitate them! That might have been a good thing.
March 23, 2023
I was in my twenties and traveling in the Middle East and reading Rilke’s poems and a woman who was older than me approached me at a bus stop and told me I was reading the wrong poet and in exchange for my Rilke book she would give me a book of poems by Vasko Popa because she was reading the wrong poet too and because I thought she was thinking about me in the amorous way I was thinking about her I exchanged books and she told me to read The Story of a Story first and I did while she waited not knowing at the time it was going to be our story and I told her honestly it was one of the best poems I’d read because somehow these simple abstract nineteen lines said more about life and love than most people are able to say in an encyclopedia of words and I also told her she was right, I was reading the wrong poet, and she said she knew that before we met and looked across the street and I realized she was already turning into a ghost and she said goodbye in German and crossed the street and entered a market and was lost in a crowd and my bus arrived and I read more poems and they were skeletons too and pulled off the same sorcerer’s trick of deep meaning and emotion in their deceptive simple structures and while I didn’t get a chance to fall in love with the woman who exchanged books with me I did fall in love with the poems and my love has lasted thirty-five years and by the time I got off the bus I realized she got all she wanted and needed from me which was just a book to replace the one she’d finished.
August 18, 2023
U nedoumici da li dam 5 ili 4, ipak utisak od pojedinih ciklusa konkretno najdužeg ciklusa u ovim izabranim pjesmama koji je bio iznimno nezanimljiv je prelomio da dam 4 zvjezdice jer je iziskivalo duže čitanje. Jedno što nikada neću zaboraviti, to je momenat kada je profesorica vrijedna pomena Julijana Karadžić podijelila neke sitne listice poezije i kada je meni zapala Velegradska pjesma. Zaista, tada je program bio obilat poezijom ali Velegradska pjesma je bila whole new level.
March 10, 2018
Great poetries of an excellent poem
April 28, 2021
was bored at times, but then a pretty quiet verse would come along and snag my attention again. soft poems, not showstoppers, but lovely all the same. inspiration.
March 12, 2018
Vasko Popa was a Serbian poet who fought as a partisan during WWII and was imprisoned in a German concentration camp. I liked his work, but I didn't love it. His poems put a surrealist spin on the everyday and require the reader to search for a meaning that is initially obscure. I liked the angry and defiant "Give Me Back My Rags" series; I didn't care for "The Little Box" series, as it was just an extended metaphor about the female reproductive system.
July 4, 2019
Extraordinary poet
Vasko Popa has a very unique, inimitable voice that has been traslated successfully into English by Charles Simic. I really appreciate that Simic has been able to keep a sense of strangeness in Popa’s diction, instead of trying to forece the poems into sounding totally English. The beauty of these poems lays in how unexpected are their images and the situations they depict. While reading them, I felt suspended on air.
Vasko Popa has a very unique, inimitable voice that has been traslated successfully into English by Charles Simic. I really appreciate that Simic has been able to keep a sense of strangeness in Popa’s diction, instead of trying to forece the poems into sounding totally English. The beauty of these poems lays in how unexpected are their images and the situations they depict. While reading them, I felt suspended on air.
September 8, 2018
No creo que sea malo, el problema de éste libro es que me dejó totalmente indiferente, y a mi la poesía me tiene que mover, me tiene que hacer sentir algo.
Hay 5 o 6 poemas muy buenos que de plano me dejaron sin palabras, sin embargo no creo que sea suficiente, ya que los otros cientos de poemas pasaron sin pena ni gloria.
Hay 5 o 6 poemas muy buenos que de plano me dejaron sin palabras, sin embargo no creo que sea suficiente, ya que los otros cientos de poemas pasaron sin pena ni gloria.
September 21, 2019
Excellent selections to reveal a major poet of our times. Charles Simic is a natural as our translator.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews