Devil's Lunch: Selected Poems (Faber Poetry) [Paperback]

Aleksandar Ristovic (Author), Charles Simic (Translator)

Book Description

Series: Faber Poetry | Publication Date: February 28, 2000

The powerful and deeply moving work of the Serbian poet Aleksandar Ristovíc, published for the first time in the United states.

Make me a long coat of heavy cloth, tailor,
the kind that won't fray,
and of a dark color,
so no one will notice the cigarette ashes.

Make the dark trousers of the same material,
to last as long as I want them to,
wearing them to visit many cities, villages,
and other out-of-the-way places.
* * * * *
Make me a dark jacket, tailor, with wide, deep pockets
to clench my fists in, while watching the one
they're dragging from my table into the bushes,
which begin to shake after a few moments.
-from "Gingerbread Heart"

Whether addressing pigs, speaking for prostitutes, or considering lavatories, the great Serbian poet Ristovic (1933-94) revealed a capacious yet unsentimental sympathy with the despised, downtrodden, and disregarded. Devil's Lunch, hitherto unpublished in America, is a quirky and moving selection of his work greatly enriched by Charles Simic's earthy and authentic translations. Simic, himself a Pulitzer Prize-winning contemporary poet, allows us to fully appreciate a major talent who always spoke with humor, honesty, and compassion.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Once in a long while one comes across a poet who strikes one as being absolutely original. . . . I will never look at anything again in quite the same way, one realizes instantly, and that's what happens. . . . Ristovic has had that effect on me."
--Charles Simic, from his Introduction

About the Author

Aleksandar Ristovíc died in 1994. Charles Simic is the author of many volumes of poetry, including The World Doesn't End, for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. He lives in New Hampshire.

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Faber & Faber (February 28, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0571200087
• ISBN-13: 978-0571200085
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 4.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,378,638 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simic translations help unearth another gem., July 26, 2001

By 

Keith Levenberg (New York, N.Y. USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Devil's Lunch: Selected Poems (Faber Poetry) (Paperback)

Readers of Charles Simic will not be disappointed in this collection and will find Ristovic's voice familiar. True, there may never have been a writer better than Simic at finding mystery (and sometimes even horror) in familiar things. But Ristovic makes his own contribution to that genre in "Old motif," where he asks, "For whom are you intended, wine in the corked bottle? / Through whose veins will you send your merry little flame, / making him behold the most ordinary things / in many strange and unaccustomed ways?"

However, perhaps the best comparison is not to Simic but to Czeslaw Milosz. Like many of Milosz's best poems, this book makes the most sense as a reaction against relativism, both moral and aesthetic. (Compare, for example, Ristovic's "Genesis according to the rules of universal poetics" with Milosz's "One More Day" in /Unattainable Earth/.) The discontentment, fear, and terror that follows when subjective will denies objective values finds expression in many of these poems, of which the best include "Purgatory" and "The essential." Chilling is Ristovic's statement that "fake evidence passed off as truth" is a thing "a dead man could be interested in."

Much of the humor Ristovic delights in follows from the absurdity of mixing the noble with the profane: In "Lavatory theatre," for example, Greek tragedy and the bathroom occupy the same dramatic space. But Ristovic never blurs the distinctions. The readers in the "Lavatory library" are those "for whom / Dante's or Homer's verses / and the writings of some scribbling nobody / have equal value."

In his introduction, Simic notes, "Many twentieth-century poets have believed in angels, but Ristovic may be the only one who believes in the devil." He appears to have put his finger on what makes these poems creep off the page in such a chilling and authentic way.