SPRING 07: Amanda Aizpuriete
She has published seven books of poetry and a novel. She was poetry editor for the magazine Avots (Wellspring) and co-editor of several other journals and newspapers. The American composer Eric Fank used Aizpuriete's poetry for his symphony for contralto and full orchestra "This Evening Seems to have Gone Bad" and the mono-opera "Anna Ahmatova." Aizpuriete has received several literary wards and was a member of the Latvian delegation to the European writers' event Literature Express Europe 2000.
Inara Cedrins is an American artist, writer and translator of Latvian descent. She received her M.A. in Arts Administration at the School of the Art Institute. She studied silk painting in China , and remained five years teaching English, writing and literature at Universities including Tsinghua University and Peking University in Beijing. She also studied Tibetan thangka painting in Napal. In Riga, Latvia, she started a literary agency called The Baltic Edge and taught Creative Writing at the University of Latvia. She is now settled in the Albuquerque/Santa Fe area.
Amanda Aizpuriete's original poems in Latvian
Poems By Amanda Aizpuriete
from Ascension Street
We were two and young coming from the river
through the summer night
and stopped on the porch.
My friend's baby lay in the carriage
with eyes wide open,
peaceful as night,
still distant from words, but to stars
so strangely close.
We were two and young, and only
one of us was a mother.
That night I went to swim again.
The clever river with a woman's name
caressed me to soothe, but sadness -
like the reflections of stars - would not flow away.
* * *
Not with dream, nor with peace
Does darkness want to touch me.
Nights as if on the roof ridge
I run in icy air.
Why are you silent down below
in the curve of green lamplight?
Please, call me by name,
so that I can fall into the hands of darkness.
* * *
from In Skies of Heather
Slipping secretively off along the tracks of my skiis
over my shoulder you look into fire.
I see the flames greet you
as their own. As I'm not greeted.
I have flesh - brownish, sadly melting snow,
and your proximity is too hot
for this eternal ice. I see: flames
stretch toward you - through me.
* * *
I envy that woman
met within me at the full moon,
that woman with your breath in her hair.
I envy her for her light tread,
for a life without a past
and that dark dahlia, which she
still carries from your last meeting.
* * *
from Ascension Street
One word similar to the wind - and reality begins.
Now let's go sit in the garden of the moon
and all questions, that taste
of answers, we'll feed there to the sparrows.
One word similar to the wind - and in the garden of the moon
it's already autumn on the outskirts of the city.
The most misty time of the year and a lifetime.
No hurry to divine it. Here reality begins.
* * *
from In Skies of Heather
The gull will be reborn in the girl.
Remember her name.
Guess her storm.
Await her like a festival.
She'll age.
She'll exist only an instant -
leaping from wave to wave,
from morning to morning sparking.
She'll have green eyes
and a white dress,
and perhaps she'll say to you
that life on this shore is too cold.
I promise you the gull
that will be transformed to a girl,
flying there, where I went -
and life will then seem to you too short.
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