About This Title
Dark Things is a collection of poems by the leading living Serbian poet of our time - Novica Tadić. The 48 poems in this manuscript have been translated by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Charles Simic, who was born in Belgrade, and is considered one of America's leading translators of Eastern European poetry. Novica Tadić's poems are dark, brilliant, spare, and ever-mindful of the enormous acts of evil that human beings commit against each other. His brief words radiate far beyond themselves, as do their silences. Tadić’s vision is cold-eyed, drawn from a life lived where war and totalitarianism have been the status quo for decades. Charles Simic writes, “Tadić is a poet of the dark night of history. His protagonist, like the condemned Christ in some painterly depiction of Ecce Homo, is surrounded by an enraged mob, who, although wretched themselves, yearn to make his last moments even more miserable. The tormenting of the helpless is Tadić's recurrent theme.” "His gripping, grotesque vision arrives at just the right time for an American audience, who see all around them, like Tadić, 'a world gone mad.'" --Rain Taxi "A life under tyranny accounts for the gloom and doom pervasive in these spare, elegant verses, expertly translated by Serbian-American poet Charles Simic...Simic's previous translations of Tadić (Night Mail; Oberlin College Press) won high praise, and this one is even stronger." --Arts with The Star Ledger "Here, the real and imaginary, the sense of poverty and of the richness of imagination, merge to produce a sense of grotesque anger and hunger." --American Poet
On a Train Station, Dream
Small, bent over, gray,
I'm sitting with arms crossed
on my luggage.
I ask nothing of no one.
Wait for no one.
I don’t know where I’ve come from
nor where I’m going.
In the trunk are my books.
In the suitcase are my shirts.
I packed everything I had.
On my head I wear
a cap of many colors,
my great pride and joy.
© BOA Editions, Ltd, 2009
Available Editions:
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ISBN: 978-1-934414-23-1
Paperback $16.00
Publishing Date: July 2009
