Selection of poems
Sometimes speaking of politics, sometimes of love or aesthetics, but above all of the human condition and the mystery of being, the poetry of Zoltán Böszörményi is outspoken, never taking refuge in cautious formalisms. It sometimes takes the form of sonnets and other fixed forms which he masters with a consummate art, which has become rare these days, sometimes that of poems in free verse, full of an ample prophetic breath. A great traveler and great reader, he walks us from Moscow to San Francisco, and invites in his poems the great voices with which his poetic destiny forces him to dialogue: Attila József, Dylan Thomas, Petrarch, Celan, Pessoa ...
This collection offers an anthology representative of all the diversity of this extraordinary poetic work, both Hungarian and cosmopolitan, classic, and post-modern, contemplative and polemical.
Zoltán Böszörményi (1953-), a Hungarian poet and novelist, was born in Arad, educated in the Transylvanian-Hungarian area of Romania, but as a young poet he moved to Canada, where he graduated from York University. After the fall of communism, he went back to Hungary to resume his literary career.
He has published three novels in English translation by Paul Sohar: Far from Nothing (Exile Editions, Canada, 2006), The Club at Eddie’s Bar (Phaeton Press, Ireland, 2013) and The Refugee (Synerebooks, 2019). These novels have also come out in Romanian, Russian, Polish, and German translations. His poetry in English translation can be found in a recent volume: The Conscience of Trees (Ragged Sky Press, Princeton, 2019).