The Long Coming of the Fire: Selected Poems (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781646053032)

Aco Sopov was born in 1923 in the town of Stip, in what is today North Macedonia. His first
book was published by the underground press in 1944, when he was fighting in the anti-Fascist
resistance. By the early 1950s, he was a major Macedonian poet, notable for his deep personal
lyricism. His volumes Not-Being (Nebidnina, 1963) and Reader of the Ashes (Gledač na pepelta,
1970) are genuine masterworks, establishing his reputation as one of the founders of modern
Macedonian poetry. Here Sopov's poetry expands into philosophical and existential questions,
even as it remains firmly rooted in an exploration of the self. The book The Song of the Black
Woman (Pesna na crnata zena, 1976) emerged from Sopov's years as the Yugoslav ambassador
to Senegal (from 1971 to 1975), a period when he also produced an award-winning translation of
poems by the poet and Senegalese president L駮pold S馘ar Senghor. His health began to
deteriorate in 1977, and his struggle with illness is reflected in his last book of poems, The Tree
on the Hill (1980). He died in 1982, at the age of 58. Collections of Sopov's work have been
translated into eleven languages, including French, Spanish, German, Russian, Hungarian, and
Romanian. The bilingual English-Macedonian collection, The Long Coming of the Fire is the first major edition of Sopov's poetry in English.