The Serbian Muse

Introduction to the SERBIAN MUSE Anthology, A bilingual Selection of the Contemporary Serbian Poetry It has been four decades since I, as a doctoral candidate at Princeton University, was asked in 1985 by the University of Northern Iowa to edit "Micromegas" – a selection of Modern Yugoslav Poetry in English translation ( mostly done by me and Charles Simic)! Since then many things had changed – most importantly, we left the 20th century behind, the country all the poets here were born into - Yugoslavia - is no more, and now we are rounding up the first quarter of the 21st century with our new Digital World of Artificial Intelligence engulfing us. All poets presented here have experiences in both centuries and bridge two worlds as most of them started their poetic careers in the last quarter of the 20th century including both editors of this volume! The present selection of 20 contemporary Serbian poets was governed by the same principle of literary quality and love for poetry as the previous one! It was also partially determined by the limited availability of good translations.