Fresco Selected Poetry of Luljeta Lleshanaku

by Lleshanaku, Luljeta; Israeli, Henry; Constantine, Peter

• ISBN13: 9780811215114
• ISBN10: 0811215113
• Edition: 00
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-04-17
• Publisher: New Directions

Summary

Fresco: Selected Poetry of Luljeta Lleshanaku introduces to English-speaking readers the arresting work of Luljeta Lleshanaku, one of Albania's foremost younger poets. Born in Elbasan in 1968, she grew up under virtual house arrest because of her family's opposition to the Stalinist dictatorship of Enver Hoxha. She was not permitted to attend college or publish her poetry until the weakening and eventual collapse of the Communist regime in the early '90s. She is among the first generation of poets to emerge out of the cultural wasteland of enforced socialist realism in the arts, reinventing Albanian poetry almost entirely from scratch. In a voice at once firm yet quiet and spare, with haunting imagery that challenges the imagination, her highly charged poems carry the burden of her own and her country's past. For Fresco , editor Henry Israeli has gathered fifty-seven poems from Luljeta Lleshanaku's published books ( The Sleepwalker's Eyes , 1992; Sunday Bells , 1994; Half-Cubism , 1996; Antipastoral , 1999) as well as some newer work. His Afterword places her writing within its personal and social context, while an Introduction by the award-winning translator Peter Constantine views the poet from the wider perspective of modern Albanian literature. The poems themselves are translated by Henry Israeli in collaboration with the author and Uk Zenel Bucpapa, Noci Deda, Joanna Goodman, Alban Kupi, Albana Lleshanaku, Lluka Qafoku, Shpresa Qatipi, Qazim Sheme, and Daniel Weissbort. Many of the translations have appeared in such magazines as Grand Street, Denver Quarterly, The Iowa Review, Seneca Review, and Quarterly West .

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Memory	p. 3
Birds and Carbon	p. 4
Peninsula	p. 5
Neurosis	p. 6
The Woman and the Scissors	p. 7
The Woman and the Giraffes	p. 8
Winter	p. 9
Chamomile Breath	p. 10
And the Sun Is Extinguished	p. 11
Perhaps My Mother	p. 12
Nocturne. Soft Whistle	p. 14
The Night Will Soon Re Over ...	p. 15
More Than a Retrospective	p. 16
Clear Hours	p. 17
Sunday Bells	p. 18
What Is Known	p. 19
Fresco	p. 23
Electrolytes	p. 24
Always a Premonition	p. 25
Test	p. 26
So Long As	p. 27
With a Piercing Clarity	p. 28
Over the icy magma for your gray curiosity	p. 29
Frost	p. 30
The Bed	p. 31
Absence	p. 32
Silence	p. 33
Our Words Have Grown Old	p. 34
Frail Bones	p. 35
Truth	p. 36
The Blossoming Almond Branch	p. 37
Still Life	p. 38
The Habitual	p. 39
Within Another Idiom	p. 40
Betrayed	p. 42
Once Again About My Father	p. 45
The Moon in November	p. 46
Only the Beginning	p. 47
Yearly Snow	p. 48
Chronic Appendicitis	p. 49
Half Past Three	p. 50
On a Night Like This	p. 51
The Awakening of the Eremite	p. 52
The Almshouse	p. 53
Antipastoral	p. 54
Out of Boredom	p. 55
Heathen Rejoicing	p. 56
Quite by Accident	p. 57
Self-Defense	p. 58
No Time	p. 59
In the Home of the Dead Man	p. 60
Night Landscape	p. 61
Farewell, Sunny Days	p. 62
Watching Them Nap	p. 63
A Mutual Understanding	p. 64
Half-Cubism	p. 65
Seasons Change	p. 66
Afterword	p. 69
Bibliography	p. 76
Index of Titles and First Lines	p. 79
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.