Author Description

Poetry. Translated from the Czech by Deborah Garfinkle. Adopting the persona of the eponymous Old Man, celebrated Czech poet Ivan Divis (1924-1999) writes of the comfort of memory, the nature of faith and the pain of exile. In this moving chronicle of loss and isolation, Divis transports us through space and time, from the pristine mountain peaks of Tibet to a Prague gutter, and from the Big Bang up to the barbarous century of Hitler and Stalin, right through to the brink of the new millennium and the threshold of his mortal existence. With alternating lines of earthy vulgarity and lyric transcendence, the poems in this moving collection expose the longing, pathos and absurdity of human existence. Available to English-speaking audiences for the first time, THE OLD MAN'S VERSES is a provocative, darkly humorous collection from one of the twentieth century's most extraordinary poets.