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gabor g. gyukics

gabor g. gyukics (b. 1958) poet, jazz poet, literary translator born in Budapest, Hungary. He is the author of 11 books of original poetry, 6 in Hungarian, 2 in English, 1 in Arabic, 1 in Czech, 1 in Bulgarian and 19 translations including A Transparent Lion, selected poetry of Attila József (2006), Green Integer Press and They’ll Be Good for Seed: Anthology of Hungarian Poetry (2021) (in English, both with co-translator Michael Castro) White Pine Press and an anthology of North American Indigenous poets in Hungarian titled MedvefelhÅ‘ a város felett (2015) Scolar Publishing.

         

He writes his poems in English (which is his second language) and Hungarian. He lived in Holland for two years before moving to the US where he lived from 1988-2002. At present, he resides in Szeged, Hungary.

 

His poetic works and translations have been published in hundreds of magazines and anthologies in English, Hungarian, and other languages worldwide. He is a recipient of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre (BILTC) residency in Canada in 2011.

         

a hermit has no plural, a collection of poems in English, was published by Singing Bone Press in the fall of 2015. His latest book in Hungarian titled végigtapint was published by Lector Press in May 2018.     

   

In September 2020, he received the Hungary Beat Poet Laureate Lifetime award by the National Beat Poetry Foundation Inc. USA.

“Before our present circumstance was looming gabor g. gyukics... detoxification of the body maintains a lingual balance remaining primed and capable, within our partial seasons as it continues to script his recognition of our “ennui” seemingly akin to the Georgics yet within our warped existential conundrum."

––Will Alexander, poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, and visual artist, author of Refractive Africa; finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and winner of the California Book Award in Poetry 2022

 

“gyukics spins and unspins words.  These poems are full of play and humor anchored by just enough ache and ring. In this work we dance the moment, understand the history, honor the old stories but know that they do not rule us, and feel the “Impossibilism” that Gyukics paints for us."

––Kim Shuck, 7th Poet Laureate Emerita of San Francisco

 

“gyukics considers three word-filled globes floating over his head, he captures them, ties them to his worktable, and using the golden needle that Hugo Ball gave him, he pierces them one by one to release clouds of words. Once they have settled there, he strokes them, thanks them, and hands them to us. They taste good, cherry soup or goulash in the cosmic cold.”

 

––Andrei Codrescu poet, novelist, and essayist, NPR commentator and winner of the Peabody Award, editor of Exquisite Corpse, McCurdy Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Louisiana State University.

 

“gabor g gyukics’ conceptual poetry, which employs outstanding compression, effortlessly creates and explores connections between incredibly distant and microscopically close subjects, is often compared to North American Indian, Far Eastern, and Hermetic poetry.”          

 

––Jiri Machanek, publisher of Protimluv Press, Czech Republic

 

 

The structure of gyukics’ free verse is reminiscent of Ezra Pound’s Vorticism, which ascribes a very special status to the poetic image. According to this view, the ‘image’ is essentially a singular moment when ‘something external and objective is transformed into something internal and subjective.’ These haiku-like image-moments cast ordinary objects, things, and events in a strange light, depriving them of their familiarity.

 

––Orsolya Rákai, literary scholar

 

“gyukics’ poems are so beautifully poignant, as they take us through that certain “passageway of no gate,” where the boundaries of space and time, the boundaries of you, me, us and others disappear, as if the memories of all the people who have ever lived and will ever come, the landscapes that have ever existed and imagined were all us /you, me, us, you, them / Every face is me; every face looks back at me and whoever looks at me recognizes themselves. This is the joy of encounter! The ability to communicate the unsayable without trying to force it into words!”

 

––E.M., a reader

 

“gyukics’ poems reflect the way his mind is merging with English: he dives into the sea of language with greater courage, greater determination of an explorer; it’s not just floating on a surface, it’s squeezing sea sponges of their juices for whatever it’s worth in any given circumstances.

 

––I.P., a reader

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