Details

ISBN-10: 1784105740
ISBN-13: 9781784105747
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Publish Date: 11/29/2018
Dimensions: 8.30" L, 5.30" W, 0.60" H

An English Anthology

Translator: Paul Vincent

Paperback

Price: $18.99

Overview

‘I was born in Belgium, I’m Belgian. / But Belgium was never born in me.’ So writes Leonard Nolens in ‘Place and Date’, which captures a mood of political and social disillusionment amid a generation of Dutch-speaking Belgians. And throughout this selection we encounter a poet engaged with the question of national identity.

Frequently the poet moves into that risky terrain, the first person plural, in which he speaks as and for a generation of Flemings, embodying an attitude towards artistic and political commitment that he considers its defining mark. ‘We curled up dejectedly in the spare wheel of May sixtyeight, ‘ he writes in the selection’s central sequence ‘Breach.’

Nolens’ poetry is haunted by giants of twentieth-century European lyricism, by Rilke, Valéry, Neruda, Mandelstam, and Celan, with whom he has arguably more affinity than with much poetry from the Dutch-language canon.

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'a monumental figure in Flemish literature' Poetry International Web
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Details

ISBN-10: 1784105740
ISBN-13: 9781784105747
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Publish Date: 11/29/2018
Dimensions: 8.30" L, 5.30" W, 0.60" H
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