Oberlin College Press

Attila Jozsef

WINTER NIGHT: SELECTED POEMS (translated by John Batki)

Paper $14.95 (ISBN 0-932440-78-9)

A radiant body of work lies in the shadow cast by the Hungarian poet Attila Jozsef's tragic suicide at 32. In pure song-like lyrics and longer elegiac poems Jozsef inscribed not only his sad fate but that of millions in an Eastern Europe that was only nominally "between the wars" during the '20s and '30s of the last century.

"Jozsef's words are shock therapy for the new millennium: angry, sad, hopeful, mystic, holy, epic, heroic, humble, disturbed."
--Rain Taxi

"Batki has done a superb job: the translations demonstrate again and again just how contemporary Jozsef's work remains."
--Authors' Review of Books

GLASSMAKERS

Glassmakers light huge fires
and stir their blood and sweat
into the materials
that boil transparent
in their crucibles.
Then, with what's left of their strength,
they pour the glass into plates
and roll it completely smooth.

And when the sun comes up
they carry light to the cities
and to the smallest village huts.

Sometimes they are called laborers,
at other times, poets--
though one is as good as the other.
Slowly they run out of blood
and grow transparent:
large crystal windows to the future
built on you.

--Attila Jozsef
translated by John Batki