The City and the Child

Poetry. Sing, young poet, touch my burning skin, darkened by long treks/ through wild hills to the ends of the world. Don’t give up now,/ when the gunners’ fevered sights are trained on the stained facades/ of museums and palaces . . . Against the backdrop of this century’s third Balkan war, Slovenian poet Ales Debeljak’s first child, a girl, is born. In the forty-two sonnets that make up THE CITY AND THE CHILD, Debeljak explores the architecture and tradition that can house such opposing intensities, such overwhelming sadness and joy . . . . This collection is testimony to the transforming power of love and the human voice — Ralph Angel.