A great man is one who collects knowledge the way a bee collects honey and uses it to help people overcome the difficulties they endure - hunger, ignorance and disease!
- Nikola Tesla

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.
- Franklin Roosevelt

While their territory has been devastated and their homes despoiled, the spirit of the Serbian people has not been broken.
- Woodrow Wilson

Biljana D. Obradović and John Gery

Biljana D. Obradović, a Serbian-American poet, translator, and critic has lived in Greece, India, and the United States. She is associate professor of english at Xavier University of Louisiana, in New Orleans.

She has two collections of poems, Frozen Embraces and Le Riche Monde. Her poems also appear in Three Poets in New Orleans and in anthologies and magazines, such as Like Thunder: Poets Respond in Violence in America, Key West: A Collection, Poetry East, Bloomsbury Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Plum Review.

.

In addition to her own poetry, other works include her Serbian translation of John Gery's American Ghosts: Selected Poems, Stanley Kunitz's The Long Boat, Fives: Fifty Poems by Serbian and American Poets, A Bilingual Anthology, and a collection of Bratislav Milanovic's poems in The Unnecessary Chronicle. She also reviews books for World Literature Today and others.


Биљана Д. Обрадовић рођена је 1961. године у Београду, дипломирала је енглески језик на Филолошком факултету у Београду, пре тога је ишла у америчку основну школу у Солуну, а енглеску гимназију завршила је у Индији. Једно време је предавала енглески језик у школи "Милица Павловић", а онда је отишла у Америку, где је 1995. године докторирала на креативном писању. На Хавијер Универзитету у Луизијани предаје креативно писање и преводи збирку песама свога супруга Џона Герија "Амерички дух". У Србији је објавила две збирке песама, двојезично, на српском и енглеском: "Замрзнути загрљај" и "Богат свет". Биљана и Џон Гери имају сина Петра.


John Gery's poetry, criticism, and reviews have appeared throughout the United States and Europe, including in Callaloo, the Iowa Review, New Orleans Review, Paideuma, Prairie Schooner, and West Branch.

He has also been a collaborative translator of works in serbian, armenian, chinese, and french. A research professor of english at the University of New Orleans, he directs the Ezra Pound Center for Literature, Brunnenburg, Italy. He was a research fellow at the University of Minnesota and a Fulbright fellow at the University of Belgrade.

Among Gery's books of poetry are Charlemagne: A Song of Gestures, The Enemies of Leisure, American Ghost: Selected Poems (English-Serbian, translated by Biljana Obradovic), Davenport's Version, and A Gallery of Ghosts.

He lives in New Orleans with his wife, poet Biljana Obradovic, and their son Petar.


SA

 

People Directory

Srđa Trifković

Srđa Trifković (also Srdja Trifković; Serbian Cyrillic: Срђа Трифковић and as author Serge Trifkovic) (born July 19, 1954, in Belgrade, FPR Yugoslavia) is a Serbian-American writer on international affairs and foreign affairs editor for the paleoconservative magazine Chronicles.

.
Read more ...

Publishing

Sailors of the Sky

A conversation with Fr. Stamatis Skliris and Fr. Marko Rupnik on contemporary Christian art

In these timely conversations led by Fr. Radovan Bigovic, many issues are introduced that enable the contemporary reader to deepen and expand his or her understanding of the role of art in the life of the Church. Here we find answers to questions on the crisis of contemporary ecclesiastical art in West and East; the impact of Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism, Surrealism and Abstract painting on contemporary ecclesiastical painting; and a consideration of the main distrinction between iconography and secular painting. The dialogue, while resolving some doubts about the difference between iconography, religious painting, and painting in general, reconciles the requirement to obey inconographic canons with the freedom essential to artistic creativity, demonstrating that obedience to the canons is not a threat to the vitatlity of iconography. Both artists illumine the role of prayer and ascetisicm in the art of iconography. They also mention curcial differences between iconography in the Orthodox Church and in Roman Catholicism. How important thse distinctions are when exploring the relationship between contemporary theology and art! In a time when postmodern "metaphysics' revitalizes every concept, these masters still believe that, to some extent, Post-Modernism adds to the revitatiztion of Christian art, stimulating questions about "artistic inspiration" and the essential asethetic categories of Christian painting. Their exceptionally wide, yet nonetheless deep, expertise assists their not-so-everday connections between theology, ar, and modern issues concerning society: "society" taken in its broader meaning as "civilization." Finally, the entire artistic project of Stamatis and Rupnik has important ecumenical implications that aswer a genuine longing for unity in the Christian word.

The text of this 94-page soft-bound book has been translated from the Serbian by Ivana Jakovljevic, Fr. Gregory Edwards, and Andrijana Krstic. Published by Sebastian Press, Western American Diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Contemporary Christian Thought Series, number 7, First Edition, ISBN: 978-0-9719505-8-0