ARMENIAN-AMERICAN POETS: A Bilingual Anthology
Translated by Garig Basmadjian
“The American and Canadian poets assembled in this volume share a common linkage: all are of Armenian descent. By an historic tragedy their fathers were uprooted from their homeland. Most found their way to North America, where their sons and daughters were to adopt another homeland as their own. Would these poets have written their poems in Armenian had not their fathers been forced to leave Armenia? It is hard to say. Today, on the 60th anniversary of the Armenian massacres by the Turks, most of them do not read Armenian, and they have little contact with the rich bulk of Armenian poetry that goes back two thousand years.
Nostalgia is lived by the fathers, and the sons face the problems of belonging or not belonging. The poetry here moves mainly in one direction: the past, an unremitting return toward roots and belonging.”- Introduction
AGBU Publishing (1976)