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i’m tormented by certain questions thoughts dim fancies on the edge of my vision flickering shadows weight upon my heart i’ve spoken of...
Tags archives: poetry
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Swallow, oh, swallow, save this day!
Smart tailor of skies,
sharp-winged one,
tail like scissors,
beak needlelike,
song ...
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You could say Doris Kareva (b. 1958) is one of Estonia’s most renowned female poets and has published nearly twenty poetry collections...
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Gili Haimovich and Mathura first met at a poetry festival in Romania seven years ago and have since enjoyed a long-standing collaborat...
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Natalja Nekramatnaja’s debut poetry collection Sinine pojeng (Blue Peonies) is severe, and truly exceptional in a year of otherwise pol...
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pp. 51–56
Am I, after the whole course of treatment, a
better person now? I’ve screwed up an unbelievable amount
of shit over ...
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Tõnis Vilu is one of the most outstanding and significant Estonian poets today. He has published eight[1] works in less than a decade, ...
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Andres Allan Ellmann (1964-1988) was one of the very few mystical poets in post-war Estonian poetry. I think it was in his blood – his moth...
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Eda Ahi is a poet whose sharp words, impeccable sense of rhythm, and rich imagery has captivated readers since her very first collection. M...
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2018, 88 pp.ISBN 9789949888399
Kristiina Ehin’s eighth and latest work But Love Has a Forest Bird’s Heart is a collection of poems writt...
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Verb, 2018. 96 pp.ISBN 9789949723812Mehis Heinsaar’s baroquely fantastical world of writing no longer needs a greater introduction for Esto...
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(Tuum, 2018)
OH SUN OH LIGHT OH DUST
I
this could be rum’s dialogue and quotation marks
but that woman I saw in the woods yeste...
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Kristjan Haljak is a poet, translator, and instructor of literature. Haljak has occasionally been called a Decadent (no matter whether seri...
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(Verb, 2018)
Obolon
Obolon’s raspberries.
...
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in the clear winter night there’s
one window still light,
behind it
a grown man curses his
slow computer.
that man is me...
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Berk Vaher, Silmanurga taga (Behind the Corner of the Eye)
Elusamus 2018, 56 pp.
ISBN 9789949884346
The title Silmanurga taga (Behind the...
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I’ve known Doris Kareva for many years. I know her to be a good person, editor, and poet, who works persistently to help and publish other p...
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I went to visit the world.
How it smelt,
how it moved and hummed!
The blood stirred in my arm – svelte,
vein...
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A woman furtively squeezes the rounded surfaces of hard, unripe pears in her purse: she must somehow change the mind of a man who is threate...
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It wasn't I who made you this way
said Darwin,
the divine intuitive care of genetics opted
to give you light hair and a dark l...
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Carolina Pihelgas, Pimeduse pisiasjad (Details of Darkness)
Kaksikhammas, 2017, 84 pp
ISBN 9789949999101
Carolina Pihelgas’s fifth poet...
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Hasso Krull, Kandsime redelit kaasas (We Carried the Ladder with Us)
Tartu, Kaksikhammas, 2017, 64 pp
ISBN 9789949880188
Carolina Pihe...
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Triin Soomets, Vaba raha (Free Money)
Tallinn, Nynorden 2017. 64 pp
ISBN: 9789949960071
Triin Soomets is known foremost as an...
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Cycle
The night before last Wednesday,
my pup died of infection,
and was laid to rest out back
until the resurrection.
He won’t be poki...
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Vladislav Koržets (1951) is a long-time celebrity Estonian writer and fisherman, whose poetry debut Songs or Such (Laulud või nii) appeared ...
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Adam Cullen (31) is a translator and poet from Minnesota. He first came to Estonia in 2006, somewhat incidentally and with his sights set me...
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Eda Ahi. Sadam (Harbor)
Tallinn, Verb, 2017. 48 pp
ISBN 9789949984152
Eda Ahi is a self-standing great of contemporary Estonian poetry....
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Elo Viiding, Teadvuselooja (Consciousmaker).
Tallinn, Tuum, 2016. 64 pp
ISBN 9789949979431
Consciousmaker begins in a psycho-mythologic...
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Kristjan Haljak. Conceptio Immaculata.
Tallinn, Vihmakass ja Kakerdaja, 2017. 65 pp
ISBN 9789949811212
Kristjan Haljak is the only cred...
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Billeneeve, Sügis nagu lõppev suhe (An Autumn Like an Ending Relationship)
Saarde-Pärnu, Jumalikud Ilmutused, 2015. 60 pp
ISBN: 9789949519...
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it’s just about late enough that the clock hands show
you’re-a dope-for-caring-
but-time-for-us-to-have-one-more-drink-now
and some guy i...
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they dance with you, gravity, everyone.
but only the brave know the steps they should take.
you’ve got that cruel but equalizing trait:
b...
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where do little
fat girls go
when insulted
beneath clotheslines
behind a house
to practice
to practice a speech
for
getting back at
...
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an old man wearing
a cotton-padded coat
rubber boots
just stopped before me and said he sees my opening
I was upset
doubtless means som...
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one time in grade school
the topic of reading class was
fairy tales redone by Disney
(that’s not quite how we classified it back then
...
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Writing about female poets, one inevitably arrives at a disturbing thought: why are some women regarded as poets, and others as poetesses? T...
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Too nice a drunk
locking up my bike in front of the store
a babbling drunk approached me
I wanted to withdraw
but he said
listen
you...
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In February 2016, compelling news rang out: Jaan Kaplinski was awarded the European Prize for Literature. The award, which is sponsored by t...
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Karl Martin Sinijärv, KMSX: Kuidas öelda (KMSX: How to Say)
Tallinn, Näo Kirik, 2016. 96 pp
ISBN: 9789949980901
Karl Martin Sinijärv (1...
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Silvia Urgas, Siht/koht (Destination)
Tartu, Elusamus, 2015. 48 pp.
ISBN 9789949387083
Silvia Urgas (1992) is one of Estonia’s newest ...
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SIMPLE POEM
happiness once came into the yard
and the yard was ever so happy
then happiness came into the room
and the room was ever so ...
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When writer and literary critic Igor Kotjuh posted on his Facebook account the top ten events in Estonian literature in 2015, one of them wa...
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Jürgen Rooste, Ideaalne abikaasa (The Ideal Husband)
Saarde-Pärnu, Ji, 2015, 107 pp
ISBN: 9789949519552
Jürgen Rooste (b 1979) is one o...
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Late one Saturday afternoon in September 2006 I sent my translations of 28 poems by Kristiina Ehin to Oleander Press in Cambridge, England ...
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Hasso Krull is a winter poet. I’m not saying this merely out of opportunism – his latest and much acclaimed collection of poetry (2006) was...
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Viivi Luik is one of the most treasured writers of contemporary Estonian literature. With her poetry, she addresses readers of her own moth...
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On 23 November 2006, one hundred years will have passed since the birth of Betti Alver, one of the most remarkable of all Estonian poets. W...
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* * *what’s the use of poetryI ask you – whatdoes poetry reconcileour divorced parentspit-a-pat holding handsbring them together againas it...
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The Star-Bright HourThe wind won’t ask: to what did life amount?To yourself you’ll render your own account.However long, however dark the n...
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The two laureates of the last annual poetry award both entered literature in the late 1990s; like Kristiina Ehin, Jürgen Rooste published h...
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A knot. I adjust one endon the other, then I draw the latteron the former, into the center of the noose.It resembles the imageof a tree wit...
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CrooningI am so fleetingsighed the girl to the seaoh, what can I doyou are eternalI am transparent like yousighed the girl to the windowoh,...
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I am an Estonian poetI come from Lasnamäewhat is Lasnamäe?an eastern districtof our capital citythere are grey buildingsfive and nine store...
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LAMADA KARJAMAAL HIIREHERNESLamada karjamaal hiirehernes,tulitav päike pää kohal kõrges;põse all poolniisked rootsud pehmed,purused pebred ...
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EELKEVADISES METSASOtsin sinililli eelkevadises metsasega leia.Kivi õitseb längus päikese käes,kivimudilasi vudib ringi,nii et silmade ...
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from the collection The First Will (Esimene tahe):* * *A tired woman on the buscompares my chestwith that of her daughtercompares my shoesw...
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Elo Viiding is one of the most distinguished Estonian poets, not only currently but also in terms of the history of Estonian literature. Sh...
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The beginning of written poetry
The pre-Romantic Kristian Jaak Peterson (14 March 1801 – 4 August 1822) who burst upon the literary scen...
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Hello- summers, black evanescences,mad dog, it’s barking at itself, it’s amad dog –- touch a dark stone, toucha deep stone, warmly, l...
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The evening of nightbirdsNightbirds sing all evening long.How all the air and all the world breathesin the screaming pain of nightbirds!We ...
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TO BE A DOG-APARTMENTto be a dog-apartment with three barking roomswith a snout-bathroomwhere one tap dribbles coldand the other hot slobbe...
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Born on 30 November 1883 in Võnnu, in southern Estonia, into the family of a village teacher, Suits came to Tartu in 1895 and began his st...
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Exchange of teaching staff between educational institutions in different countries is a common phenomenon. It does not always happen, howev...
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The prize-winning poem byMARI VALLISOO I Don’t Build Ei ehitaI don’t build...
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1. The history and social background
Ethnofuturism is a term which was born like a joke because there was a need for innovations in lite...
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On Estonian literature’s path to world literature, truly exotic events occur, largely thanks to Estophiles scattered around the globe. One...
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Arved Viirlaid. Selected Poems. Selected and translated from the Estonian by T.E. Moks and R.W. Stedingh. Vancouver. Lyre Press, 2001. 194 ...
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A THOUSAND TIMESA thousand times the falling coffin lidhas tried to keep me underneath,where the dove, my dream, has veered amidwarm ashes ...
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The first Luulesild/Runon silta (Poetry Bridge) between Estonia and Finland occurred way back in 1982. The number of venues where the poets...
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The collection Tuulelaeval valgusest on aerud – Windship with Oars of Light, subtitled Estonian Modern Poetry, brings together poetry writt...
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I would give you my heart, but I can’t findanywhere even the scent of its buttercups,I have lost it somewhere, where one wandersunder golde...
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Yes still this sense that those rare
soulbirds who really hear and know
touch as well as flight
must be sheltered from night’s...
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The tragic Estonian poet, Juhan Liiv, who lived on the knife-edge between genius and insanity, lived at the turn of the 19th and 20th centu...
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ONLY THE MISTS ARE REAL
The wind is a shuttle made of elm-wood,I am but an airy web of duskWhich God’s tapering fingers of a unicorn’s b...
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The sugar dissolved in the coffeeand spring began,scented and sweet.Your hands danced upon the tableThe long forgotten steps of me...
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Silence and ViolenceLong ago on a windy hunta horrible happiness abruptly bloomed in me and the landscape congealed only its pungentb...