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Nation Mourns Loss of Historic Cultural Brand
If you hadn't heard, the famed Hungarian poet and literary translator György Faludy passed away on Friday at the ripe old age of 95. One of Hungary's most recognizable cultural personalities, thanks to his shock of salt-and-pepper hair and forbidding perma-scowl, Faludy was recalled by Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány as "an artist of exceptional talents with an exceptional destiny." Like all great artists, Faludy knew that art is, if not beside the point, only the starting point, and he mostly made his point by living - and looking - like an important artist should. (He posed in the buff with his much younger third wife - and we mean much younger - after the age at which most European sensualists stop looking at dirty pictures.) But enough dry prose. To fully pay tribute to this master of poetic self-promotion, we've enlisted the exceptional talents of non-Hungarian poet and literary translator David Hill, who was moved enough to offer his appreciation in iambic pentameter, or whatever it is that these insufferable poetry types call the following:
The long white hair.
The craggy stare.
The nude shoot with his wife.
The interviews
on prime-time news.
The well-milked tragic life.
Recitals: slick.
A much-used dick.
Young lovers of both sexes.
Some curse-like thing
that seemed to bring
weird deaths to all his exes.
It's understood
the product's good.
Recorded sales attest.
But marketing:
now that's the thing
in which he was the best!
Young poets, dull,
will muse and mull,
but never understand.
A malady
slew Faludy,
but not his killer brand!
David Hill recently translated several of Ádám Nádasdy's poems, and can otherwise be found at www.lyriklife.com.
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