Witch's Island and Other Poems

Book excerpt: PETER HARGITAIs work, both in scope and in style, remains well outside the pale of current poetic fashion including the McPoems of MFA mills and the lip- tongue- ear literature of hiphop. Influenced by the great Hungarian poet Attila Jzsefs obsession with the eternal mother as a metaphor for all human longing, Hargitai probes the nature of spiritual exile on terms that are neither Freudian nor Jungian, American, or Hungarian, but on terms that are uniquely personal and movingly human. Praise for Peter Hargitais Mother Tongue: A Broken-Hungarian Love Song: If traditional confessional poetry, now considered classical, had its halcyon days in the work of Roethke, Lowell, and Plath, it can be said to have reached a new, ethnically charged peak in the work of Peter Hargitai. Pembroke Magazine Peter Hargitai is a remarkable versatile and humanely touching poet with a truly distinctive style and voice. These deeply probing intellectual poems exhibit an impressive range and vivacity of genres." Laurence Lieberman Poetry Editor University of Illinois Press