The World Poetry Anthology, celebrates the 25th anniversary of Shabdaguccha, an international bilingual poetry magazine edited by Hassanal Abdullah. All poems published here previously appeared in Shabdaguccha from 1998 to 2023.

This volume presents poets like Pablo Neruda, Jibanananda Das, Stanley Kunitz, Adonis, Louise Glück, Jayanta Mahapatra, Bengt O Björklund, Kazimierz Burnat, Manfred Chobot, John Kinsella, Dariusz Tomasz Lebioda, Amir Or, Shamsur Rahman, Serge Pey, Nat Scammacca, and many more from fifty-nine countries.

Hassanal Abdullah’s vision of world poetry . . . strives not just for an inclusive global reach but for a sense of poetry as a habit of life, a habit which can disclose both entail complexity and depth of feeling. Abdullah has provided a poetic matrix in which readers can always be surprised, and in which the most gratifying satisfaction will always necessarily yield to something new and something more surprising.

—Prof. Nicholas Birns, Department of English, New York University

This anthology provides contributing poets the opportunity to see each other as members of a literary community. We are all, quite literally, “in this together.” Perhaps it will inspire authors to communicate with each other and with the broader audience more freely. I hope everyone will read the anthology with a sense of urgency, particularly reflecting on how poets have contributed their ideas and passions to the shaping of a complex and tense new age in which a global perspective is our only home for survival.

—Prof. Joan Digby, Professor Emeritus, English Department, Long Island University.

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La World Poetry Anthology (Antología mundial de poesía, edición en inglés) celebra el 25 aniversario de Shabdaguccha, una revista internacional de poesía bilingüe editada por Hassanal Abdullah. Todos los poemas publicados aquí aparecieron previamente en Shabdaguccha desde 1998 hasta 2023.

Este volumen presenta a poetas como Pablo Neruda, Jibanananda Das, Stanley Kunitz, Adonis, Louise Glück, Jayanta Mahapatra, Bengt O Björklund, Kazimierz Burnat, Manfred Chobot, John Kinsella, Dariusz Tomasz Lebioda, Amir Or, Shamsur Rahman, Serge Pey, Nat Scammacca y muchos más, de cincuenta y nueve países.

La visión de la poesía mundial de Hassanal Abdullah... no solo busca un alcance global inclusivo, sino también un sentido de la poesía como hábito de vida, un hábito que puede revelar tanto la complejidad como la profundidad del sentimiento. Abdullah nos provee de una matriz poética en la que los lectores siempre pueden sorprenderse y en la que la satisfacción más gratificante siempre dará lugar necesariamente a algo nuevo y aún más sorprendente.

—Prof. Nicholas Birns, Departamento de Inglés, Universidad de Nueva York.

Esta antología ofrece a los poetas participantes la oportunidad de verse unos a otros como miembros de una comunidad literaria. Todos estamos, literalmente, “juntos en esto”. Tal vez inspire a los autores a comunicarse entre sí y con el público en general con mayor libertad. Espero que todos lean la antología con un sentido de urgencia, en particular reflexionando sobre cómo los poetas han contribuido con sus ideas y pasiones a la configuración de una nueva era compleja y tensa en la que una perspectiva global es nuestro único hogar para la supervivencia.

—Prof. Joan Digby, Profesora Emérita, Departamento de Inglés, Universidad de Long Island.

COMPRAR WORLD POETRY ANTHOLOGY

Born and raised in New York City in a milieu infused with Russian culture, Natalie Bider Lardner has been writing poems for five decades. This is Eden is her first published book. It is a poetry collection that encompasses eight stages of a love cycle: Courtship, Places, People, States of Mind, Divorce, Resilience, Love and Sex, and Death.

Lardner's poems involve an acute observation of life facts and situations, and her style goes from lyricism to the technical challenges of poetic forms, which she achieves successfully.

As a teacher of English and as a professional translator from Russian, her lines are carefully crafted and every single word has a necessary place in each poem, there are no extra divagations.

Instead of a formal introduction to her book, she placed a first poem that reflects very well the content of the following pages. The title of the poem is "Destination Wedding":

Destination Wedding

Shall we enjoy a feast during the plague

or after or before, considering that

the blackest plagues recur, their pustules, ague

and pyres burn, peaking and falling flat?

Shall we go dance in fields where soldiers died

in wars that only led to other wars

the ink of treaties barely dry, tears cried

and wiped as greed and need reopened sores?

Shall we rebuild old governments and towns

bulldoze the crumbling remnants of what fell

rededicate ourselves while background sounds

suggest calliope and carousel?

And shall we have a wedding on the scene

of so much torment, bondage, death, and rape

when years of history have intervened

brought self-reflection, talk and shifting shape?

Regardless, lovers stand where others stood

and plight their troth with fingers ringed for good.

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Amir Or's poetry seamlessly integrates social context, war, signs of barbarism, religion, love, philosophy, and various facets of life. He is a pioneer in crafting new imagery. Some of his poems narrate stories directly, with each line forming a vivid picture. While Plato famously excluded poets from his Republic, Socrates, conversely, underscored the importance of stories in every poem. The stories Amir weaves through his verse are uniquely his own, making him a distinct voice in world poetry. —Hassanal Abdullah

Language Says

Language says: before language stands

a language. Language is traces

stained by over there.

Language says: listen now.

You listen: here was echo.

Take silence and try to be silent.

Take the words and try to speak:

beyond language, language is a wound

from which the world flows and flows.

Language says: is, is not, is,

is not. Language says: I.

Language says: come on, let’s speak you,

let’s touch you; come on, say

you’ve said –

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From the Threshold, as the title suggests, offers a perspective on life where the mystery of existence appears in a sometimes disturbing but also existential and metaphysical way. This collection of poems seeks to portray a look at the experience of existence with eyes that see into both directions of that “threshold”.

To be at the “threshold” is not only to be at an entrance, at a door, but also at an exit. The work collects musings about existence in a style that might remind us of Hawthorne or Poe, but also of Vallejo.

Its distinctive touch is given by the personal and enigmatic interpretation of reality, including metaphysical topics, sometimes through risky literary figures, which often seek original grammatical constructions to manifest mental images, in an attempt to paint concepts of a personal philosophy of life. “The necessary symbols are there to communicate what is unknown to us, what we cannot grasp, attempting to manifest this daily and absolutely enigmatic practice called: life”, says the author.

My Chest as a Sarcophagus

My chest is a sarcophagus

Without a corpse,

A somber shell

Filled with silence.

My chest suffocating

With leftover bones,

As a mournful keyboard

Of broken mysteries.

My chest

Is a hard alien armor,

A vessel filled

With cast-iron shadows.

Translated by Marko Miletich

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