[biography] - [quotes] - [publications]
1981 Jóslatok és határidők (et. Prophecies and Deadlines)
1987 Tovább egy házzal (et. One House Later)
1991 Fehér-fekete (et. White-Black)
1994 New Life (selected poems translated, with an Introduction, by George
Szirtes) "Zsuzsa Rakovszky is established as one of the most talented
poets in Hungary. The most striking feature of her work is her ability
to cram sharp, meticulously observed details into rigorous forms. The
result is a poetry at the same time sensuous and intelligent; it is
rich in what one might term the "modern conceit". Take the
opening of her poem "Love": "This predator - could this
be love? This flood / reduced to a walk-on part, a moral curd."
Complex and even contorted emotions find expression in a language which
her translator George Szirtes describes as "racy and fast, flittering
but precise". New Life is a valuable introduction to the work of
an interesting and rewarding poet." (George Gömöri, TLS. jan 6
1995)
1994 Hangok (et. Voices) Selected and new verses; dramatic monologues
and longer reflexive poems. "It is partly the classical control,
partly the brilliant clarity of her observation, that has attracted
people to Rakovszky's work. While her poems tend to concentrate on what,
at first sight, may appear to be intensely private experiences, with
the themes of love, deceit, guilt, identity and personal loss uppermost,
there is something it them that broadens their field of reference, a
current of feeling encompassing a general and public sense of place
and identity. The world of her poems is recognizably the world of her
readers, a shifting urban landscape of noisy neighbours, malfunctioning
television sets, shadows on landings, snatched meetings, and dying ideologies.
The realism she deals with is only one step from a kind of hallucination
driven by desire; there is a process of disintegration evident in both
object and setting. Essentially she is working in what remains of the
tragic tradition, in circumstances where tragedy still makes sense if
only because the stakes are relatively high. There is, in fact, a clear
political element in her poems, but it is one in which politics is not
so much a distinct issue as the stuff of life, a moral climate that
conditions the most personal expectations." (George Szirtes)
1998 Egyirányú utca. Új versek 1994-97. (One-Way Street) New poems,
philosophical poetry comparable to T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets, focusing
on time, memory and the self.
FOREIGN LANGUAGE PUBLICATIONS
New Life (selected poems translated, with an Introduction
by George Szirtes) Oxford; New York Oxford University Press, 1994.
Notes. A selection from 3 books of poems, originally in Hungarian.
selected poems in:
Child of Europe, ed. Michael March. Penguin Books, 1990.
As if... The Starwheel Press, 1991.
The Colonnade of Teeth. Modern Hungarian Poetry, edited by George Gömöri
and George Szirtes. Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, 1996.
[biography] - [quotes] - [publications]
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