Why read The Long Coming of the Fire?

Book cover of The Long Coming of the Fire: Selected Poems

Book description

A collection celebrating the Centennial of seminal modernist Macedonian poet Aco sopov. This substantive collection represents Sopov's creative career, starting with his first book of poetry in 1944, when he was fighting in the Yugoslav resistance to the German occupation. In the early 1950s, he published two collections that signaled…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Long Coming of the Fire as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Sibelan Forrester

Author

Aco Šopov (1923-1982) is one of the fundamental poets of Macedonia, and indeed the first poet ever to have a whole book of his verse published in Macedonian, a language that had been suppressed for generations.

This book will appear in fall of 2023, but I have already seen some of the translations by Rawley Grau and Christina Kramer online—and they’re dynamite, full of hard-won versions of the thoughtful, deep-dwelling originals. Šopov is not the only brilliant poet of his generation, but he alone can prove that a small nation can produce big poets.

And how are we to know,…

From Sibelan's list on The best books of poetry from Eastern Europe in translation.