Publisher's Synopsis
Radmila Lazic is one of Eastern Europe's most pugnacious contemporary poets. She doesn't mince her words. Her lacerating poems pulverise lovers and rivals alike, leaving both for dead. 'Goodness is boring,' she writes: 'Too often I bare my teeth. I'm sensitive, my love, like a pregnant bitch - Capable of tearing anyone apart Who comes close to me…' Her Wake for the Living swings from this attack on meekness to a jaw-dropping lament for faded beauty… from 'I'll Be a Wicked Old Woman' to a manhunting-song in praise of sexual desire without obligation. Through many compellingly strange leaps and dodges, Lazic describes an identity - personal and political - informed by catastrophe and victimisation that restlessly and imaginatively swerves into irreverence and absurdity. Translated with Charles Simic's matching surrealist wit, A Wake for the Living gives English readers their first unforgettable lashing from the brilliant Radmila Lazic.
