Foamy Sky: The Major Poems of Miklos Radnoti (Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation)

One of Hungary's leading poetic voices of the twentieth century, Miklcs Radncti (1909-1944) wrote some of his country's most cherished love poems and political verse even as he anticipated death under the Nazis. This English-only edition presents many of the poems that appear in his Foamy Sky volume and a selection of others dating back to 1929. A good portion of the poems were written during World War II, when Radncti, of Jewish descent, was forced into a slave-labor squad and sent to work building roads in the Balkans. On the final march through Hungary toward Austria near the end of the war, the guards murdered the disabled prisoners who had not already died en route and buried the bodies in a mass grave. Radncti's last poems were found in the pocket of his coat when his body was exhumed. The poems are characterized by a strong prosodic form, which Radncti believed was important to the sense. Unlike previous English translations, this one captures the poet's use of classical meter and lyrical rhyme as well as his visionary imagery and heroic voice.