Another Republic: 17 European and South American Writers

by Charles Simic (Editor), Mark Strand (Editor)

Overview

First published in 1976, this astonishing anthology from two U.S. Poet Laureates, Charles Simic and Mark Strand, compiles a selection of the finest translated literature of the time, showcasing the then-little-known writers who had a profound influence on the current generation of poets.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780880011914
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	04/01/2008
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.64(d)

About the Author

Charles Simic was a poet, essayist, and translator who was born in Yugoslavia in 1938 and immigrated to the United States in 1954. He published more than twenty books of poetry, in addition to a memoir and numerous books of translations for which he received many honors, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Award, the Griffin Poetry Prize, a MacArthur Fellowship, and the Wallace Stevens Award. In 2007, he served as poet laureate of the United States. He was a distinguished visiting writer at New York University and professor emeritus at the University of New Hampshire, where he taught since 1973. He died in January 2023 at the age of eighty-four.

Read an Excerpt

Another Republic
17 European and South American Writers

Chapter One

The Pleasures of the Door

Kings do not touch doors.

They know nothing of this pleasure: pushing before one gently or brusquely one of those large familiar panels, then turning back to replace it—holding a door in one's arms.

. . . The pleasure of grabbing the midriff of one of these tall obstacles to a room by its porcelain node; that short clinch during which movement stops, the eye widens, and the whole body adjusts to its new surrounding.

With a friendly hand one still holds on to it, before closing it decisively and shutting oneself in—which the click of the tight but well-oiled spring pleasantly confirms.

Another Republic
17 European and South American Writers. Copyright © by Charles Simic. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.