Books, CD, DVD

Bronislava Volkova

Can be obtained at: http://books.balkanatolia.com/cgi-bin/catalogB.cgi/sl-e/p-l/mid-413/s-0/.html

Vzpomínky moře

Vzpomínky  moře(The Sea Recalls), Collected Poems from the Years 1973-2010, Pavel Mervart, Červený Kostelec, Czech Republic 2011

Collected poems from ten poetry collections of Bronislava Volková. The work is illustrated by ten color collages by the author and contains a CD of her reading. The work is concluded by an afterword by Vladimír Novotný, as well as introductions and afterwords from previous editions published abroad (by Bohumil Hrabal, Lubomír Doležel, Willis Barnstone and Marie Banerjee Němcová). The book was published by Pavel Mervart 2011 (hardbound, 392 pp) under a grant of Ministry of Culture of Czech Republic and Borns Jewish Program of Indiana University. The poetry has been widely reviewed and translated into eight languages. Much of it is available in English translation. This is the first edition of Volková‘s work in Czech Republic.

Available here:

www.kosmas.cz, www.pavelmervart.cz, www.bronislavavolkova.com

And Drink We Will from Delectable Wells… 

Explorer Editions, Bloomington, IN, USA 2011. Czech version, ibid. 2010.

Bronislava Volková’s poetry collection offers us a poetry which expresses author’s philosophy of spiritual liberation and perpetual rejuvenation in the here and now, sending out shoots of new growth in all directions. Her verse is the flight of imagination of the heart and of language itself. Its light, effervescent quality is matched by its commitment to intellectual sobriety. Her message to humankind, sometimes dark and sometimes bright, is always generous. It is filled with an irrepressible gust of emotional exhilaration ever poised to break through her delicately winnowed lines. At one moment she cautions against spiritual death and in the next celebrates the breathtaking, shared gift of life. Her poetry has been described as “complicatedly simple” (Josef Hrubý), a “sun for the conjuring away of night,” (Marián Hatala) and a lyrical space where “freedom is paramount” (Clarice Cloutier).

~Bethany Braley, May 2011

The book (2010-11) is being published simultaneously in Czech and English as a limited twin edition with three color collages and two photographs by the author in each. Custom bound, 73 pages each, $15.00 per copy +$5.00 for shipping and handling. Sold separately or together. When ordering, send a check made out to Bronislava Volková. E-mail orders are welcome: volkova@indiana.edu.

A pít budeme ze studní lahodných 

Explorer Editions, Bloomington, IN, USA 2011. Czech version, ibid. 2010.

Bronislava Volková’s poetry collection offers us a poetry which expresses author’s philosophy of spiritual liberation and perpetual rejuvenation in the here and now, sending out shoots of new growth in all directions. Her verse is the flight of imagination of the heart and of language itself. Its light, effervescent quality is matched by its commitment to intellectual sobriety. Her message to humankind, sometimes dark and sometimes bright, is always generous. It is filled with an irrepressible gust of emotional exhilaration ever poised to break through her delicately winnowed lines. At one moment she cautions against spiritual death and in the next celebrates the breathtaking, shared gift of life. Her poetry has been described as “complicatedly simple” (Josef Hrubý), a “sun for the conjuring away of night,” (Marián Hatala) and a lyrical space where “freedom is paramount” (Clarice Cloutier).

~Bethany Braley, May 2011

E-mail orders are welcome: volkova@indiana.edu

Up the Devil`s Back / Po hřbetě ďábla: A Bilingual Anthology of 209th Century Czech Poetry

Up the Devil’s Back / Po hřbetě d’ábla: A Bilingual Anthology of 20^thCentury Czech Poetry, Slavica Publishers, Bloomington, IN, 2008.

presents 65 selected Czech poets in English translation, together with their biographies. Co-translated and co-edited by Bronislava Volková (Professor of Czech literature, Comparative literature and Jewish studies at Indiana University) and Clarice Cloutier (Assistant Professor of Central European literature and culture at New York University [Prague campus] and Lecturer at Charles University, Prague). The anthology features well-known poets alongside those who have not received well-deserved attention, female poets alongside males and exile poets alongside those who remained in Czechoslovakia under totalitarian regime. With Introduction by authors and Afterward by Alfred Thomas.

From the Afterword by Alfred Thomas, University of Illinois, Chicago

“To be frank, it takes an enormous deal of personal courage to undertake a project such as either history or anthology of one’s own literature. Bronislava Volková and Clarice Cloutier took a look at the Czech poetry today, set up limits, and created thirteen categories: Beginning with the middle of nineteenth century Czech poet Antonín Sova (1864-1928), they scanned the highlights of different phases of modern Czech poetry developments and went to work, thus opening the riches, and the marvels, of contemporary Czech poetry to any Czech or English-speaking interested reader all the way to contemporary Martin Reiner (born 1964)… this Slavica volume is a veritable walk through a garden of delights.”

From the review by Jiřina Fuchsová, poet, former lecturer at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, Czech Dialogue, 7-8, 2009

“Up the Devil’s Back, a bilingual anthology of 20th-century Czech poetry just hitting Prague bookstore shelves, is one of the more successful recent examples of such attempts at being definitive….. the monumental task of selecting and translating the work of 65 Czech poets and giving such eclectic diversity a sense of unity.”

“This anthology, containing 168 poems by 65 twentieth-century poets, most of which appear here in English for the first time, is absolutely indispensable for students and teachers of Czech literature and culture. It is also an enjoyable reading for anyone interested in poetry in general, or preparing for a trip to Prague. …Volková and Cloutier deserve praise for accomplishing the admirable feat of compiling the most complete poetry anthology ever published in English. It is more objective and reliable than its outdated predecessors.”

From the review by Kirsten Lodge, Columbia University, SEEJ 2010

Avaiable here: www.amazon.com zde: or: www.slavica.indiana.edu zde: 

Born out of Darkness, Explorer Editions, Bloomington-Praha

Explorer Editions, Bloomington, IN 2005.  This book of the well known Czech American poet is taking the reader on a journey through the most grievous errors of human civilizations as well as through personal grief and self made traps fabricated by the structures of modern life. It then switches the mirrors, taking us to places of peace, wisdom, lightness and consolation. The author moves through environmental and war issues, old and modern civilizations‘ inhumanity, aging and death of the closest ones and ends with peaceful meditational poetry. The book was supported by a grant from Indiana Arts Comission.

The book is being published simultaneously in Czech and English as a limited twin edition with a different set of four color collages by the author in each. Bound in hand made paper, 94 pp each. English version edited by Clarice Cloutier. Sold separately or together $16 per copy plus shipping and handling. E-mail orders are welcome: volkova@indiana.edu.

Ze tmy zrozená

Explorer Editions, Bloomington-Praha, 2004. This book of the well known Czech American poet is taking the reader on a journey through the most grievous errors of human civilizations as well as through personal grief and self made traps fabricated by the structures of modern life. It then switches the mirrors, taking us to places of peace, wisdom, lightness and consolation. The author moves through environmental and war issues, old and modern civilizations‘ inhumanity, aging and death of the closest ones and ends with peaceful meditational poetry. The book was supported by a grant from Indiana Arts Comission.

The book is being published simultaneously in Czech and English as a limited twin edition with four different color collages by the author in each. Bound in hand made paper, 94 pp each. Sold separately or together $16 per copy plus shipping and handling.

E-mail orders are welcome: volkova@indiana.edu.

Jistá nepřítomnost / A Certain Absence

“The author tends to an existential abbreviation, to the reflection of a moment. Her crystalline poetry, which strives for genuine expression, should be published in its totality in our country as well: it is an informed, mature poetry of our times. However, another era will surely have to begin before it is freely accessible to us. Even though it is true that ‘poems are mere nothing/ the stairs into the pain of the horizon’…”

Vladimír Novotný, Mladá Fronta Dnes, Prague 2-5-1991

Bronislava Volková’s poetry pulls back the curtain, revealing an arena where the profound and mundane elements of life engage one another and vie for reality. The reader, at times in muted shock, absorbs the enfolding scene at a personal pace and explores the myriad of subtle implications presented in the verses which in turn carefully stretch one into a deeper state of discernment.

In her collection, A Certain Absence, Bronislava Volková beckons one to draw close to the cosmic juxtaposition of presence and absence within the vortex of existence without the danger of losing one’s balance: freedom is paramount. The reader is awakened and aware of the void where one, having done all, is empowered to stand in peace.

Clarice Cloutier, “Introduction”, 2001.

E-mail orders are welcome: volkova@indiana.edu

Entering Light /Vstup do světla

Entering Light / Vstup do světla, bilingual limited edition, Explorer Editions, Bloomington-Prague, 2002.

“… And it is so difficult to write a poem, which would not be useless. A poem that at least one reader would not be able to forget. A poem which contains an unexpected knowledge. A poem that would be a scalpel opening the soul. A poem – a challenge to an indifferent heart. A poem that would awaken the sleeping self. The poetry of Bronislava Volková is not useless. A single assiduous reading of one of her collections, will anchor a person firmly and will make them her admirer. Bronislava Volková offers an insight into her sensitive and restless heart, filled with an artistically refined search for oneself.”

Věra Hoffmannová, Charles University, Prague, 2001

E-mail orders are welcome: 
volkova@indiana.edu or www.amazon.com here

Proměny / Transformations

bilingual limited edition, Explorer Editions, Bloomington, 2001, with and essay on bilingual writing.

Mojmír Trávníček, Nový Hrozenkov, Zprávy spolku českých bibliofilů, Prague, 2003

“The work of émigré poet, scholar and linguist Bronislava Volková illustrates how the artist’s impulse to create can triumph over having been cast out of Paradise. As Maria Banerjee aptly observes in her Afterword to the fascinating and highly engaging collection, Proměny / Transformations, Volková ‘a healer’ who ‘has moved beyond the trauma of exile’ through the power of her cross-cultural vision. Volková’s transformations chart her odyssey through the fires of alienation from which she arises phoenix-like with unity restored. Initially, the lyric functions as a disembodied ‘cry that carves sorrow’ (pláč jenž vytesává hoře), materializing before us as if brief illuminations out of the void. In the beginning, there is suffering, darkness, disruption and the frozen wastelands of Dante’s hellish vision (The Inferno the work of another poet-exile). As the cycles progress, Volková’s ‘I’ finally conquers its terror of nothingness by facing its fears head on to accept the universe’s constant state of flux.”
Deborah Garfinkle, Menlo College, California, Kosmas, 2004

E-mail orders are welcome: volkova@indiana.edu or www.amazon.com here

Motáky do uší pěny / Prison Notes Smuggled into the Ears of Sea Foam

Bilingual edition, Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston, New York, 1999. Co-translated by author, Willis Barnstone, Andrew Durkin, Gregory Orr and Lilli Parrott. English translation of Motáky do uší pěny, originally published in Czech by PmD (Poetry Abroad, Munich) in 1984.

“…. [her] verses have their roots in that vision of open world and later – perhaps even in the form of those “prison notes smuggled into the ears of sea foam’ – if we should pay homage to her classical poetic image – they become a momentous argument convincing us that literary reflection continues to have weight even in the foolish world of mass media abbreviation and poetry on the verge of globalizing creative illiteracy…. We all are constantly thrown into the ever-present foam of the days – but only the lyrical poetic stanzas are able to recognize the longed for form in this chaos and labyrinth, to install the desired order, to find the way toward the goal – i.e. they know how to be poetry.”
Vladimír Novotný, Prague, Listopad, 2000
Available: www.amazon.com here

Roztříštěné světy

(Selected Poems, Shattered Worlds), Votobia, Olomouc, 1995

“In the poetry of Bronislava Volková there is something silky, something like threads of a spider web stretched in an open space. Each poem is an attempt to hold the words in a weightless state above the sensed oppressive weight of the world. A few years ago this poetry was still something of an exception in the Czech context. Today, in the new era, it flows right into the main stream, which is an interesting proof of the fact that Czech poetry is as alive in Bloomington as it is in Prague. This collection of Bronislava Volková shows very clearly the intrinsic lyricism and stylistic tenderness which so far have not received much attention in foreign portrayals of literature.”
Miroslav Holub, Prague

“It is striking how fast the sense of exactness and metaphoric firmness and purity grows in her poetry. It is realized e.g. in the area of verbal tenses: in the perfect tense she evokes a feeling of a roaming uncertainly, nostalgia and melancholy, while the present tense is a field of brutally concrete visions and situations (‘the sound of wind reminds me of cut flesh’) and dynamically vivid and clear discourses (‘When I dance, I smell of the colors / of laughing hillsides…’ To the raw concrete words belongs the perhaps most frequented noun ‘vzduch’ (air) which also characteristically entered into the title of one of her collections Vzduch bez podpatků (Air without Heels, 1987).”
Mojmír Trávníček, Brno, Proglas 8, 1996

“The Shattered Worlds are characterized by a much richer register than we suggested in the previous lines. Toward the more striking moments belong American motives, archaic and modern semiotics worlds, invasion of linguistic terminology into lyric poetry, etc. Our task, however, did not consist in the exhaustive catalogisation of its items. Let us be thankful that Czech poetry has in the person of Bronislava Volková a type of a poet, who inventively combines intense lyricism with intellectualizing meditation.”
Petr Hanuška, Olomouc, Tvar (Prague), 1997

“…Substantially more extensive is the book Roztříštěné světy (Shattered Worlds), subtitled Selected poems 1974 – 1989. This book offers a cross-section through the work of the author, showing that the fifteen years from her departure to exile till the fall of the totalitarian system in Czechoslovakia were for Bronislava Volková  extremely fruitful poetically. The collection was published in 1995 by a well-known Olomouc publishing house Votobia. This very ingeniously crafted selection covers all the forms of her poetic handwriting, the diversity of her thematic direction, the wealth and originality of her motives. This poly-thematic and poly-motivic character exemplifies the best that Czech poetry gave birth to in the essentially dramatic decades of the second half of the twentieth century.”
Igor Hochel, PEN, Bratislava, 2004

PmD (Vulnerability of the Earth, Poetry Abroad), Munich, 1992. “In ‘Vulnerability of the Earth’, Volková searches for the untouchable. She steps on her toes to survey her land ‘blooming with spirit’. She removes herself from this world only to approach it even more, – a basic paradox, which forms the spine of her spiritual experience.”
Jiří Salvet, Brno, Host, 1998a

aProměny

(Transformations), Alfa-Omega Press, limited edition, Prague, 1991. With photographs of Josef Šnajberg, graphics by Věra Martinková.

This little book is a preliminary version of what was later written and published bilingually as Proměny / Transformations, Explorer Editions, Bloomington-Prague 2000, 2001 (see reviews under that edition).

PmD (A Certain Absence, Poetry Abroad), Munich, 1990.

“Poetry collection A Certain Absence shows, that we have in front of us an experienced author, who not only perfectly masters the secret of the creation of modern lyric, its devices and techniques, but also has a unique, original voice. The collection A Certain Absence confirms that we will have to place Bronislava Volková somewhere in the forefront of contemporary Czech poetry.”
Igor Hochel, Bratislava, Romboid, 1990

aVzduch bez podpatků

(Air without Heels) PmD/Poetry Abroad, 1987.  “She affects mostly by her breathing, the freedom, with which she shifts from aiming toward utterance to an autonomous discovery, without getting stuck on one of these two “poles”. Precisely Air without Heels strikes us by the heightened importance of the “message” and the author’s vision of the world. Even the characteristic lightness of the author’s verse itself, which is equally its quality and inner value, becomes an urgent poetic thought and it seeks an echo in reality. The best works in the collection are thus both unique word crystals and quiet, but giddy challenges which illuminate reality in a new way and cut out of it unknown, but equally unique territories.”
Petr Král, Paris, Svědectví (Témoinage), 1988

Dům v ohni

(House on Fire) PmD/Poetry Abroad, 1985, “Volková tests the words. She is curious, what will they bear and still be communicative? Under what circumstances will they still allow the reader to enter the poem? She is tempted to seek the space, which one can reach beyond words. Poetry becomes for her a linguistic creative process. One can also say that the world of Bronislava Volková is a linguistic laboratory. The titles are significant and they are the gate into the world beyond the poems. In spite of their ‘intricacy’, they are metaphorically meaningful. Where this crossing happens, a very authentic poetry sparks:…”
Vladimír Justl, Prague, Rok, 1992

CD

Nejmenší připomínka Tvého bytí…

This CD represents a non-identical, expanded twin to the English version, a thirty year retrospective poetry reading, from nine books of poetry by the author with musical inserts by Gita Morenová, Dagmar Zárubová (violin) and Božena Kronychová (piano); 79.07 minutes.  A few poems are also read in English.
Cover collage: Fire Water Earth Air and Ether by author

E-mail orders are welcome: volkova@indiana.edu

The Slightest Reminder of Your Being…