Words On Poetry: Poet Writes in a Language with Its Own Source

Summary

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Basque is an ancient language. It is probable that it even pre- exists Indo-European in Western Europe. And like most very old languages, it has few or no relatives. The native name for Basque is Euskara, spoken mainly in a Spanish autonomous community and in the Pyrenees. It has a variety of dialects -- and it has its poets.

Kirmen Uribe was born in 1970, and although relatively young, is one of the best-known Basque language writers. Meanwhile Take My Hand (Graywolf, 2007) is the first book of his published in English, translated by Elizabeth Macklin, who works closely with the author. The poems, at least in their English rending, seem squarely in the tradition of modernism and of contemporary poetry. The poet uses tag lines from such sources as Sylvia Plath and George Seferis.

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Extract

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Words On Poetry: Poet Writes in a Language with Its Own Source

The poem The River speaks of what is gone, hidden, covered over while at the same time performing a kind of emotion...

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