Ivar Ivask

Ivar Ivask Poems

Ivar Ivask Biography

Ivar Vidrik Ivask (December 17, 1927 Riga – September 23, 1992 Fountainstown, Ireland) was an Estonian poet and literary scholar. He escaped in 1944 from Estonia to Germany and lived from 1949 onwards in the USA and from 1991 in Ireland. He worked as a professor of Modern Languages and Literatures in the University of Oklahoma, writing mainly on Spanish language literature. From 1967 to 1991 he was the editor-in-chief of the international literary quarterly World Literature Today (formerly Books Abroad) and directed its two affiliated biennial literary programs, the Neustadt International Prize for Literature (1970- ) and the Puterbaugh Conferences on Writers of the French-Speaking and Hispanic World (1968- ), later known as Puterbaugh Conference on World Literature. He was married to Latvian poet and translator Astrid Ivask.)

The Best Poem Of Ivar Ivask

Arvo Pärt

Those recurring chords
resonance of bells
that continuous swell
sacred rivers of sound
gentle angelus
this surging return
upon angelic scales
gentleness of bells
essential simplicity's
angelus


These are hardly diaries
rather continuities
life reflections
of transparent verse
conflagrations

Turning the pages you return
home to the warm farm lawn
to sleep among the camomile
till sweet oblivion

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