Editorial
Warm greetings to all of you, our critical readers and charitable critics. More than once I’ve been asked (as I’m sure all of you have as well): Where can I read your poetry? Your prose? Who are your most interesting writers? What is Lithuanian literature like? What is most important to the writers in your country?
Milda De Voe: There is no weirdness New York cannot absorb
- Details
- Interviews
When I was little, I wanted community so badly that I went through the Houston phone book to see if I could find any Lithuanian last names. In that entire big city, I found only one Lithuanian surname. I called and left a message in Lithuanian, but they did not call me back. I sometimes wonder if they would have returned my call had I left the message in English—and how I would have explained that to my mother.
Auris Radzevičius-Radzius
- Details
- Poetry
step out of the dream box, o Hamlet, your hour draws near
step out of the dream box
step out of the dream box
you can wear a colorful dress and sail and sail down the river
Ken Ilgūnas: “Out of the Wild”
- Details
- Interviews
The name is a survivor. That is how I think of Lithuania as well. Lithuania is a survivor. How the hell is that country still intact? It’s been battered about by these huge empires for hundreds of years, it has been occupied, and its people were brutalized and suppressed and terrorized, and then every time, Lithuania emerges again from the ashes. For me, Lithuania’s story is an amazing story of resilience. Maybe I didn’t find that relative who made me feel that I could say “I could do that because he did that.” But at least I can say, I’m Lithuanian, this country did that. This country survived.
Dovilė Bagdonaitė
- Details
- Poetry
I am the water running down gutters,
the sound of conversations echoing off walls.
Isn't it beautiful? I ask,
The things that bind us.
A beautiful trap
- Details
- Reflections on Belonging
The dangers accumulated in the process of translation are very real, and yes, hitting a patch of ice or a dumpster or smacking your head on the concrete are very accurate metaphors to describe them. While I was reading between languages and thinking how they should theoretically be translated into each other, it somehow never occurred to me that I would end up practically translating them.
by Kotryna Garanašvili
Romualdas Granauskas (1939–2014)
- Details
- Archive
did you not manage to sow in their hearth the seed which was not going to rot even when you were long dead; may it pass into their children and the children of their children, till finally it will leave out and carry dark blue blossoms of pride; after all, somebody has to sow, somebody has to be sowing all the time, even if you know in advance that you are not going to see either the blossoms or the fruit, may they continue growing under the clear and eternal sun
Antanas Miškinis (1905 - 1983)
- Details
- Archive
Just recently still elegant, self-confident and handsome,
Now sapped by hunger, scurvy and slave labour,
A gulag old-timer is languishing with fever:
Just a few days will settle his account.
