Arshi Pipa

Arshi Pipa Poems

Arshi Pipa Biography

Arshi Pipa was an Albanian-American philosopher, writer, poet and literary critic. He attended school in Shkodër until 1938. Pipa received a PhD in philosophy at the University of Florence in 1942. After he completed his studies he was a teacher of Italian language in different schools in Albania. He was imprisoned for ten years (1946–1956) in Communist Albania because he antagonized the communist regime with his recitation of a verse from a "Song of the Flea" by Goethe found in a translation of Faust. After he was released from the prison (he was sentenced for 20 years of prison, but after amnesty it was cut to ten) he escaped to Yugoslavia and lived in Sarajevo during the period 1957–1959. In 1959 he emigrated to United States where he was first a teacher at Adelphi College, Georgetown University, Columbia University, UC Berkeley and then in 1966 to 1989 he was a professor of Italian literature at the University of Minnesota, Department of Romance Languages. Pipa died in Washington DC on July 20, 1997. The first poetry Pipa composed in late 1930', Lundërtarë [Seamen], was published in Tirana in 1944. When he was in prison he thought out and actually wrote some parts of his best known collection of poems Libri i burgut [The Prison Book], published in 1959. His epic poem Rusha (1968), composed in 1955 during Pipa's imprisonment, describes love between Albanians and Serbs in the late 14th century. Pipa claimed that unification of Albanian language was wrong because it deprived Albanian language of its richness at the expense of Gheg. He called unified literary Albanian language a "monstrosity" produced by Tosk communist leadership which military conquered Anti-Communist north Albania and imposed their Tosk Albanian dialect on the Ghegs.)

The Best Poem Of Arshi Pipa

The First Night

A kitchen, not in use for ages,
Over the sink with its porcelain tiles,
An oil lamp coughs black smoke,
The door locked, the windows sealed.

A cluster of shadows low along the wall,
A chamber pot behind the door, near it some old
Onion skins, a rat gnawing on crumbs of bread,
Someone gulping from a flask.

The shadows shift, curious eyes and faces
Emerge from cloaks and shawls,
A heavy step shakes the stairs. Silence.

A clank of deadbolts, a scream near the office,
Another howl, frightening and long, followed
By demeaning curses. Then the bolts again... and steps...

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