Lidija Dimkovska’s poems presented here are all the more compelling in the plain-spoken way they grapple with their before and after perceptions of death. Recalling the best of Wislawa Symborska, they offer their clear-sighted vision with startling precision and understated grace.
In these quasi-haiku by Marc Delouze, poetry speaks to the blind in words that crack open to make us see. Though these words are like spider thread, they spin in “barbed orbits” to “tear the sky from [our] ears” that the soul might be broken by them.
–Barbara Siegel Carlson
Barbara Siegel Carlson is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Current published by Lily Poetry Review Books, 2026. She is the co-translator (with Ana Jelnikar) of Look Back, Look Ahead, Selected Poems of Srečko Kosovel. Her poetry and translations have appeared in On the Seawall, Verse Daily, Mid-American Review, Salamander, 2River, The Poetry Porch, among others. Carlson is a Co-Poetry in Translation Editor of Solstice.
