From the Interior: Poems 1995 - 2005

by Petr Borkovec, Justin Quinn (Translation)

Drawing from the entirety of an internationally-renowned young poet's acclaimed career, thisaudience to the glorious details of everyday moments and situations.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2008

Reviews

[Betty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Upon reading the translator's Introduction by Justin Quinn, I learned a little more about Czech and Russian poetry...a plus..., and discovered that Petr Borkovec's relative youth (b. 1970) releases him from the concern of prior Czech poets with political dissent. Indeed, Borkovec writes about nature, its flora and fauna and water, about interior spaces, its source from childhood visits to his grandmothers in a village outside Prague, and the easy flow between the two places and their superimposition, especially from inside to outside. This bilingual book, Czech and English on facing pages, has a lot of pleasing poems, some of which are 'Hyacinth', 'Room', 'In the Eye of the Dragonfly', 'The Work', 'Snow General', 'Ode', 'Pine', 'Trail', 'Perch', 'Winter in the City', 'Preening Himself', 'Judolia Strangalia', 'Uprooted Trees', and 'Frost'...The book ends with a short memoir about his three grandmothers, who though the same in time and place were individuals in how they gathered mushrooms, how they lived at home, and how they had so different backyards on the edge of the forest and mountains. Another memory is the absence of fathers, who are there only through the artifacts, like photos or clothing, strewn in attics and closets supposed to be off-limits to him. His descriptive text about childhood journeys here, he claims, is as valid as another's description. Ilma Rakusa says on the back cover that His elaborately rhyming poems resemble still lives, precarious momentary shots in which inside and outside come into contact... Some of these poems came from his previous collections Polni prace and Nadelbuch/Needle-Book.