A Rusty Needle

Poetry Book Society recommended translation of this title. Ivan V Lalic is perhaps the finest poet in the Serbo-Croat language, and thanks to Francis R Jones' translations his work can be read as authentic poetry in English. "A Rusty Needle" traces his development over nearly twenty years, from his first published poems to the end of the sixties. It gives 'an excellent overview of a remarkable poet', as Edwin Morgan writes in the "PBS Bulletin". He continues: 'Although he has many lyrical poems on themes of love and landscape, the most distinctive part of his work relates to the ebb and flow of historical conquest and change on the northern shores of the Mediterranean...He broods over darkly crucial events like the fall of Byzantium to the Turks, and delivers interesting questions about the ambiguities of memory'.