They came from America - John Ashbery, Anne Sexton and Billy Collins
CULTURE - Sunday, February 12, 2023 | 18:45
Within a relatively short period of time, three significant figures of (post)modern American poetry were able to present themselves to the Hungarian audience in an independent volume. Each publication is one of the most beautiful achievements of the domestic literary translation culture operating under bleak conditions.
With the regrettable demise of Nagyvilág magazine , online world literature forums such as VersumOnline and 1749.hu also have a greater responsibility. The former - in cooperation with 21. Század Kiado - aimed to introduce famous contemporary (or almost contemporary) poets. The poems of John Ashbery (1927–2017) were published at the same time as the Norwegian Tor Ulven. This volume, which was originally published in 1975, is considered a grand opus of postmodern Western lyricism, which is also alive with the tools of the avant-garde. Language-critical metaphysics and a complexly enigmatic sense of experimentation meet each other in the Self-Portrait( in a Convex Mirror (trans. Dénes Krusovszky, Gábor Lanczkor, Balázs Mohácsi, 2020.) As a demonstration, some cut out: "I've tried everything, only some were immortal and free." (As Someone Put Drunk into the Packet Boat) - "I am writing to you in order to ventilate these few thoughts and feelings [...] and all kinds of simple delicacies / Which warms the heart and creates a competitive feeling of kindness / Compared to the regular, what we keep in our hearts is the same" ( Lithuanian Dance Band) - "Not knowing that the universe is a huge incubator." (All and More).