Major Themes in György Faludy's Poetry

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
The year after Faludy’s death I expected an avalanche of papers presented on the poet at the subsequent AHEA conference so I restricted my presentation to one aspect of his oeuvre, his concern about the environment and the way its deterioration threatened the future of mankind. Perhaps the poet’s death had caught some scholars off guard, because as it turned out, there were no other papers presented on his work. Now that a selection of my 123 Faludy translations is about to come out in an e-book form from The WriteDeal publishers under the title of “Silver Pirouettes” I would like to give a more general talk on every aspect of Faludy’s work from every period of his life, illustrating them with my translations that have appeared in 23 literary magazines in the US, UK, Canada and Austria. In order to conform to the theme of this upcoming 2013 conference I will again demonstrate the poets disillusionment with industry and the havoc it was wreaking on the environment, but in addition I will show another development that gave him cause to worry about the future: the general dumbing down of the people of the West, especially the younger generation. Preserving the past was also on his agenda; he had a deep commitment to Western Civilization and its roots in the Greco-Roman world, because he saw the past as a guide to the future. A people without a past had no future, he always maintained.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Paul Sohar ended his higher education with a BA in philosophy and took a day job in a research lab while writing in every genre, publishing seven volumes of translations, including "Dancing Embers", his Kanyadi translations (Twisted Spoon Press, 2002). Now a volume of his own poetry (“Homing Poems”) is available from Iniquity Press. His latest “The Wayward Orchard”, was a Wordrunner Prize winner: www.echapbook.com/poems/sohar (2011). His Faludy translations are scheduled to be published by The WriteDeal. His prose work "True Tales of a Fictitious Spy" was published by SynergeBooks in 2006. He has given talks at MLA and AHEA conferences and lectures at Centennial College, NJ. His magazine credits include Agni, Kenyon Review, Rattle, Salzburg Poetry Review, Seneca Review, etc.