Slovak -- Not Waiting for Miracles: Seventeen Contemporary Slovak Poets edited by Peter Milcak and Brano Hochel and translated by Stefania Allen, James Sutherland-Smith and Viera Sutherland-Smith and illustrated by Peter Grisa

Not Waiting for Miracles: Seventeen Contemporary Slovak Poets. Peter Milcak, Brano Hochel, eds. Stefania Allen, James Sutherland-Smith, Viera Sutherland-Smith, trs. Peter Grisa, ill. Levoca, Slovakia. Modry Peter. 1993. 190 pages, ill.

In his long review published in the Slovak literary monthly Romboid (1994), the American critic Philip Balla stressed that Not Waiting for Miracles "filled a very big gap in Central European culture." He also attempted to describe the motives for assembling the anthology by asserting that the Slovaks, unlike the Czechs, the Poles, the Hungarians, the nationalities of the former Yugoslavia, and the Russians, have not had many of their poets translated into English. Balla is incorrect. As can be proved by George J. Kovtun's Crech and Slovak Literature in English: A Bibliography (1988), over thirty twentieth-century Slovak poets are available in English translation, and if those omitted by Kovtun are added, the number exceeds forty. On the other hand, seventeen of the poets included in Not Waiting for Miracles are making their debuts in the English-speaking world, at least in book form (several of them have appeared in English in such journals as Oxford...