Overview

WithThe Grove of the Eumenides, the Lithuanian poet Tomas Venclova affirms his place as one of Europe's greatest living poets, the heir to Akhmatova, Mandelstam and Mioszis a collection of great wisdom. Venclova's poetry addresses the desolate landscape of the aftermath of totalitarianism, as well as the ethical constants that allow for hope and perseverance. Bloodaxe published another selection of his poetry,The Junction, in 2008, bringing together new translations of his most recent work from that time as well as a selection of poems from his 1997 volumeWinter Dialogue. WhileThe Junctioncovered poems written while he was still in Lithuania before his forced emigration and poems from his first decades in the US dealing with exile The Grove of the Eumenidesaddresses 'later life' issues of democracy, memory, climate, travel, ethics and aging. There is no overlap between the two editions.

Full Product Details

Author:   Tomas Venclova ,  Ellen Hinsey ,  Ellen Hinsey ,  Diana Senechal
Publisher:   Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Imprint:   Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Edition:   Paperback original
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 1.20cm , Length: 23.40cm
ISBN:  

9781780377599

ISBN 10:   1780377592
Pages:   128
Publication Date:   20 November 2025
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Language:   Lithuanian

Table of Contents

15 Ellen Hinsey: Tomas Venclova: Poetry of Witness and the Return of History I 25 On Both Sides of Alnas Lake 27 To Master Radovan 29 Dictator 31 The Process of Beatification 33 Before the Fort 34 Azovstal 36 Flight 39 The Grove of the Eumenides II 43 South of the Prospect 45 Chinese Impressions 54 Landscape with Polyphemus 55 Three Imperfect Sonnets 57 ‘The Stream of Smoke Dissolved in Yesterday’s Air’ 58 Prehistory 60 Cavalryman near Seinai 61 Beyond St Anne’s and the Bernardines 63 Extra Urbem 66 Caligula at the Gates III 69 August Elegy 71 Notes on Xenophon 74 Death of the Argonaut 76 ‘Tell me, what did you love? One city you left behind’ 77 Mother of the Living 79 ‘It’s not instantly clear why it comes up so rich’ 81 From the Future 82 Kotor Sun 83 Eos IV 87 Hamden, Connecticut 89 Hurricane 91 Three O’Clock at Night on the Sea 94 Syllabic Stanzas 96 The Moss of Ammassalik 98 ‘Leaving the subway with a pack on my back’ 100 The Way to Planty Park, Kraków 102 Variation on the Theme of Awakening 104 Delft 105 To My Daughter 106 ‘Let the time you no longer remember’ 109 Notes 113 Sources for poems 115 Selected bibliography 119 Translators

Reviews

Venclova is a lyric poet of magisterial allure, committed to philosophical meditations…Part exile, part seer, he is the artist as witness and a living example of a literary elite that evolved in crisis yet remained true to the dictates of art. -- Eileen Battersby * The Irish Times * Every major poet has an idiosyncratic inner landscape against which his voice sounds in his mind… [Venclova’s] landscape is that of the Baltic in winter, a monochromatic setting dominated by damp and cloudy hues – the light of the skies condensed into darkness. -- Joseph Brodsky If in Venclova’s volume, Winter Dialogue, there is a concern with endurance, and a search for absolutes in the face of adverse conditions both in Lithuania and in exile, in his most recent work, The Junction, we find the figure of a poet returning from exile, surveying what has occurred, what buildings still stand, and the fates of those one loved. And while these poems are filled with melancholy at the passage of time, there is also a sense of affirmation. For despite everything, each element that is salvaged constitutes a form of victory – a testimony to all that can be, and is, preserved from the vicissitudes of History. -- Ellen Hinsey

Author Information

Tomas Venclovaby Ellen Hinsey was published by University of Rochester Press and Boydell & Brewer in 2017. After many years in New Haven, Connecticut, and a period spent in Krakw, he returned to Lithuania and now lives in Vilnius. Ellen Hinsey (editor & co-translator) has published ten books of poetry, essays, dialogue and literary translation, with a focus on Eastern Europe and democracy. Her poetry collections include The Invisible Fugue (Wildhouse Poetry, USA, 2023); Update on the Descent (Bloodaxe Books, 2009), a 2007 National Poetry Series Finalist; The White Fire of Time (Wesleyan University Press, USA, 2002; Bloodaxe Books, UK, 2003); and Cities of Memory (1996), winner of the Yale Younger Poets Award. A former Berlin Prize Fellow of the American Academy in Berlin, she has been the recipient of Lannan and Rona Jaffe Foundation Awards, among others. Born in Massachusetts and long resident in Paris, she was educated at Tufts University in the US and at the University of Paris, and has French and American nationality. Diana Senechal (co-translator) was born in Tucson and holds a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Yale University. Her selected translations of Tomas Venclova, Winter Dialogue, first appeared with Northwestern University Press in 1997, and a selection of these were republished in The Junction: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2008). From 2011 to 2016 she taught, advised, and led the philosophy program at Columbia Secondary School, before moving to Hungary. Rimas Uzgiris (co-translator) is a Lithuanian poet, translator, editor and critic. His many translations include Then What: Selected Poems by Gintaras Grajauskas (Bloodaxe Books, 2018). He holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MFA in creative writing from Rutgers-Newark University, and teaches translation at Vilnius University. He has received a Fulbright Scholar Grant, a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellowship, and the Poetry Spring 2016 Award for his translations of Lithuanian poetry into other languages.

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