The colonnade of teeth : modern Hungarian poetry /

In the poem "Dedication," Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz stands in a post-WW II cemetery in Poland and questions "poetry which does not save / Nations or people." The Hungarian poets in this new collection find themselves in similar places, voicing similar thoughts, and they do so in striking ways. Miklos Radnoti chooses a pastoral mode, usually associated with regeneration, to express violent emotion about his wartime experiences; Attila Jozsef's appropriately titled "Elegy" is bleak rather than turbulent: the speaker compares his soul to smoke that "swirls in thick banks over the sad land," yet like the smoke, the soul "sways, yet stays." Jozsef extends hope to his readers in "Ode," where the persona is sitting "on a shining wall. / The light summer wind / rises like the warm welcome of supper." Some poetry in this collection is ironic and witty. In "A Sentence about Tyranny," Gyula Illyes metaphorically describes tyranny in six pages. Not as esoteric as the subtitle of the collection suggests, these poems depict a broad range of events and celebrate the "rebellious" writers of this region. The translators' "Notes on the Poems" and "Biographical Notes" are rich supplements. Upper-division undergraduate through faculty. J. A. Dompkowski; Canisius College

These five books admirably demonstrate the diversity of international poetry; they have no common ground, except, perhaps, that they share an American publisher. Tranströmer and Enzensberger are translated (from Swedish and German, respectively), in crisp, powerful English. Tranströmer is probably the most highly regarded of poets in Sweden, enjoying a fine reputation worldwide, and his poems are widely available in English. This collection offers new work in a dual-language text that invites careful reading, and the English versions ring for what they are, pleasingly. Enzensberger's work is presented only in translation, but it doesn't seem likely that you will go wrong trusting translator Hamburger. Enzensberger is a product of Nazi Nuremberg, a disciple of Marx, and a wry, satiric, rogue with intelligence, who finds poetry in social criticism and a wide range of techno-scientific knowledge. The work collected in The Colonade of Teeth, an anthology of Modern Hungarian poetry, has been translated by many hands. How awful it is that we are not more familiar with these poets: Sandor Csoori, Miklos Radnoti, Agnes Nemes Nagy‘35 in all. All were born after 1900; Gyozo Ferencz, the youngest, was born in 1954. Hungarians have a national treasure in these poets, and this volume should shed a well-deserved light on their work. Bejamin Zephaniah is a Rasta poet, Jamaican playwright, and musician who writes for the page with an acute awareness of speech and sound. He slips in and out of idiom and dialect without losing either poise or rhythm. Dunmore employs a more measured line, a soft-stepping gait but is no less passionate. Her menagerie includes tigers, toads, and tortoises, as well as muggers and murderers. Her keen sense of story and lyrical voice will reward many readers. A varied assembly, then; there's something for everybody here. Recommended for international poetry collections.‘Louis McKee, Painted Bride Arts Ctr., Philadelphia (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.