Kevin Prufer

I'm a title. Click here to edit me

 

from Publishers Weekly…
[Starred Review] Tasked with representing European poets who began publishing after 1970, poets and editors Miller and Prufer recruited 24 regional editors—including Marilyn Hacker (Belgium, Luxembourg, France and Switzerland) and Rika Lesser (Finland and Sweden)—to select and translate 270 contemporary versifiers. The resulting anthology—designed to emphasize poets not already well represented in English—is sure to be a boon to all kinds of poetry lovers and an important reference for decades to come. From Valzhyna Mort of Belarus (“Outside your borders/ they built a huge orphanage,/ and you left us there, belarus”) to Poland's Adam Wiedemann (“Imagine a situation where it never occurs to you/ to think of any other situation”), Norway's Cathrine Grøndahl (“...the most frightening thing is simply/ to be named John Doe and to land in Smalltown”) to Portugal's Rui Pires Cabral (“Great city/ of the missing, so often I didn't have/ the vigor to take pleasure in/ your small, deserted/ gardens”), these poets range from the surreal to the all-too-real, portraying decades of sweeping political change throughout Europe and rendering inner lives shaped by circumstances and places as varied as the languages in which they write. American readers are sure to find many new favorites among those included, and they may even find their whole conception of contemporary European literature upturned.

from World Literature Today
A major anthology that represents all countries in Europe and includes the work of many new poets who are published here for the first time in English.  —Rita Signorelli-Pappas

from Metamorphoses
Indespensible....impressive, aesthetically diverse, and highly readable.  —Corey Marks

from Boston Review
A remarkable reading experience.  —Jordan Davis

from Poetry Wales
New European Poets opens horizons.… A splendid anthology.   —John Taylor

from The Kansas City Star
I found no weak poem, and I always had a sense of authenticity. These are works written not for tourists, but rather for serious poetry readers of any origin... This guidebook fills a need for American poets and readers of poetry.

from The Bloomsbury Review
This anthology is hard to put down ... New European Poets will break new ground for translation and for shifting attention back to the grand European tradition—a timeless dimension whose vibrancy is vital in keeping global writing connected ... [a] monumental accomplishment by a group of committed editors and publishers...proof that American poetry can only sustain itself when it acknowledges that the origins of timeless poetry lie elsewhere.   —Ray González

from Harriet: The Blog of the Poetry Foundation
[I]t's impossible not to celebrate this book with a big whooping Hurrah.... This is not only the most necessary recent anthology I’ve seen, it’s the most adventurous. New European Poets is one of those actual instances of a book that is very hard to put down. With its stand-out handsome cover, it makes (in case any holidays were approaching and you were wondering what I’d recommend), a durable gift to yourself and friends. Prufer and Miller: great work!  —Forrest Gander 

from New Letters
Enjoyable and energetic ... Reading New European Poets is like discovering a dozen new literary journals, all of high standard, among which lurk, possibly, the next great poets of Europe.  —George Fitzpatrick

from Notre Dame Review
The co-editors of Pleiades, one of our best current journals, have co-edited a fine and rich volume of European poetry assisted by twenty-four "regional editors." Poets writing in English from England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland take their place beside translated poets from both Western and Eastern Europe, including Russia and the former republics of the old Soviet Union. Most of the poets will be entirely unknown by most readers.  —Editors Select

from Three Percent
…a nearly perfect undertaking.  —Margarita Shalina 

from Cordite Poetry Review
…New European Poets prepares us, as any good anthology should, for exploring the terrain of contemporary European poetry.

 

[BACK]