Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Wordstorm

for Sigitas Parulskis

a Slavic sounding
avalanche of poetry

even though i recognise the word
transvestite
in the original

the translated poem
still takes me
unawares.


(Sigitas Parulskis, Gintasas Grajauskas and Eugenijus Alisanka, three Lithuanian poets read at the Edinburgh International Book Festival earlier today).

4 comments:

polona said...

i love listening to foreign languages although i may not understand a thing... and this speaks to me.

i don't think the baltic languages (to which lithuanian belongs) are closely related to the slavic ones, though...

Crafty Green Poet said...

HI Polona - it sounded quite Slavic though in some ways and here is Wikepedia on Baltic languages: According to most linguists, the Baltic languages show closest relationship with the Slavic languages, and are commonly reconstructed to have passed through common Proto-Balto-Slavic stage, so perhaps I'm not too wrong, but point taken...

haiku-shelf (Angelika Wienert) said...

an interesting topic

Lithuanian is a Baltic language

It is one of the oldest surviving Indo-European languages.
As far as I knowt there are slavic elements but these elements don`t dominate the language.

best wishes,
Angelika

Odessa said...

like polona, i also love listening to foreign languages, poetry or otherwise. they're like music to my ears.