An autobiographical poem that reflects on the past while looking toward the future, Zima Station (Stantsiya Zima) is a narrative of encounter and discovery told in a strong voice. Inspired by a 1953 visit to Yevtushenko’s family in Siberia, the… Read More ›
Zero Hour (1957; 1960) is the best-known example of Ernesto Cardenal’s “documentary” poetry and provides a fine example of the exteriorista poetry with which he is identified. The poem was originally conceived of as a longer epic poem about Central… Read More ›
The Young Fate is a long and obscure but highly evocative poem of over 500 lines in alexandrine verse by French poet Paul Valéry. This poem, frequently cited by critics as his masterpiece, presents the thoughts of a young woman… Read More ›
Published in Zehra Çirak’s third book of poetry, Fremde Flügel auf eigener Schulter (Alien Wings on Your Own Shoulder, 1994), “Frauen—Porträt I” is part of a versatile ekphrastic cycle in which a series of photographs or paintings (or ironically framed… Read More ›
Found in the last of Gabriela Mistral’s published books of poetry, Una mujer (A Woman) reflects the maturity and skill of its author. Lagar (Wine Press) is the product of an experienced poet, although the volume reflects the issues that… Read More ›
With a Burning Thirst is the title poem of Kim Chi-ha’s second collection of poetry. This collection was published in 1982, after he was released from prison. This volume presents Kim’s criticism of President Park Chung Hee’s and his successor… Read More ›
Paavo Haavikko’s Talvipalatsi (The Winter Palace) represented the culmination of a decade of innovative work that helped introduce modernism to Finnish-language poetry in the 1950s. A series of nine long poems, it should be seen as one unified text in… Read More ›
This poem was first published in the collection of poems Acque e terre (Waters and Lands) in June 1930. Vento a Tindari is composed in unrhymed verse, with each line containing a varying number of syllables. In Italian, the rhythm… Read More ›
Boris Pasternak When the Weather Clears A dish-like lake, serene and spacious, Converging stormclouds overhead And there, beyond, the alpine glaciers, Lustrous and stark, sublime and dread. The lighting alters and the woods Go through a constant change of color,… Read More ›
This poem is from Tanure Ojaide’s Delta Blues and Homesongs, a collection of poems inspired by the plight of the people of the oil-rich Niger Delta of Nigeria. The crisis in the region came to the attention of the world… Read More ›
The Weaver Bird is perhaps Kofi Awoonor’s most famous poem. An early work, it initially appeared in Awoonor’s first volume of verse, Rediscovery (1964). What seems on the surface to be a simple complaint about a nest-building bird resonates with… Read More ›
This poem, which is part of Lorna Goodison’s collection I Am Becoming My Mother, is representative both of the poet’s particular focus on the experience of women and their strength and of her interest in Caribbean history and the heritage… Read More ›
Water, Rushes and the Moon (Siv, vand og måne) perfectly illustrates the major themes of Bjørnvig’s mature work: his love and respect for pristine nature, his abhorrence for what he called “the filth in the landscape,” and his belief that… Read More ›
It so happens I am sick of being a man. And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie houses dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes…. Read More ›
One of Cavafy’s earlier poems, Waiting for the Barbarians is also one of his best known internationally, second perhaps only to Ithaka. With its diachronic subject of how a society relates to those it designates as the barbaric others, the… Read More ›
During Osip Mandelstam’s internal exile in the Soviet city Voronezh, Anna Akhmatova visited her Acmeist colleague, whose 1934 arrest she had witnessed, and wrote this poem in March 1936. The poem first appeared in the journal Leningrad, with the last… Read More ›
André Breton published Vigilance in 1932 in the collection Le Revolver à cheveux blancs (The Revolver with White Hair), which consists of texts written between 1915 and 1932. Vigilance is to be found in the third part, containing poems written… Read More ›
We call it a grain of sand, but it calls itself neither grain nor sand. It does just fine without a name, whether general, particular, permanent, passing, incorrect, or apt. Our glance, our touch mean nothing to it. It doesn’t… Read More ›
It is appropriate that this poem ends Paolo Volponi’s 1986 collection Con testo a fronte (With Parallel Text), a title that signifies that it complements some other text (testo). Vista sull’anno parallelo is thus a fitting conclusion because the “parallel… Read More ›
The United Fruit Company (1950) by Pablo Neruda is part of section five of Canto General, “The Sand Betrayed,” and was inspired by Pablo Neruda’s visit to Colombia in September 1943. At the time, the Colombian government was embroiled in… Read More ›