The Colonnade of Teeth

While Hungarian music enjoys a high international reputation, Hungarian poetry is known only through the work of a few outstanding representatives such as Attila Jozsef, Miklos Radnoti, Sandor Weoeres, Janos Pilinszky and Agnes Nemes Nagy. Yet it is precisely their poetry that Hungarians treasure most, arguing that the isolation of the language has resulted in neglect of its writers. This anthology aims to demonstrate the justice of this argument by presenting the work of the most important Hungarian poets of the 20th century, starting with the major figure of Lorinc Szabo, born in 1900. Some of the poets included, such as Gyoergy Faludy and Victor Hatar, have worked mostly in exile; others, for example Sandor Kanyadi, are members of Hungarian minorities living outside Hungary's present borders. Those working in Hungary itself include the middle generation of Otto Orban and Zsusza Takacs, and younger poets with international reputations such as Gyoergy Petri, known for his sharp satires and ironic elegies, and Zsuzsa Rakovszky, with her passionate and closely observed poems of everyday life.