Re: typical Yank ignorance of the Australian poetic scene

As opposed to typical Australian ignorance of the Australian poetic scene, you mean? There might be some demographics within Australia among whom she is well-known, but claims that her (or anyone else's) work is commonly studied in schools should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Gwen Harwood was one of the set authors in the New South Wales Higher School Certificate's English course, in the unit 'Change'.

Many high school students would have had to study her work whether they liked it or not, since English was a mandatory subject in NSW high schools.

"I assume the title is the Macedonian equivalent of Serbo-Croatian bl(ij)esak 'flash of light'"

You have to assume on the basis of Serbo-Croat? The Polish cognate is błysk, isn't there a Russian one?

Oh, sure, but SCr is closer to Macedonian. It's Russian blesk.

Great poem, thanks!

(I think you have a stray apostrophe in the last paragraph...)

Fixed! And thanks; it doesn't look good for a copyeditor to have stray apostrophes lying around...

Don't the other copyeditors swarm him and peck him to death if they see that? It's a good thing that you're among friends.

I once had to hold off half a dozen feral editors with nothing but my bare hands and a battered copy of Words into Type. Sure, I can laugh about it now, but my life flashed before my eyes. And I kept looking for misprints in it, which distracted me from my life-and-death struggle.

The poem or the lyrics lines are very touching and it has a inner meaning which can't be understood if we read leisurely. So, read it again to get the meaning.

______________
mousami

Macedonian is basically a dialect of Bulgarian (however much this idea infuriates Macedonians). I don't have a Macedonian dictionary but my ancient Anglo-Balgarski Rechnik gives as one of the definitions of "flash" blesak (with the Old Bulgarian e which is now pronounced as 'a before a back vowel; the a in the second syllable -- should be written with a circumflex, but this comment format doesn't allow diacritics -- is the conventional way of Romanizing the soft yer, pronounced in Bulgarian as schwa).

I once tried to obtain a basic language primer or even a phrasebook in Macedonian for a trip that never came off. There hadn't been one published recently, and none was available, I suspect because of the political disagreements over the language--in that region apparently language is a factor in determining ethnicity and therefore political borders.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_views_on_the_Macedonian_language

should be written with a circumflex, but this comment format doesn't allow diacritics

Nonsense. What you talked about is â, and what you actually mean is ǎ.

Macedonian is basically a dialect

Not just one!

in that region apparently language is a factor in determining ethnicity and therefore political borders.

Not just apparently, and not just in that region.

David, much as I hate to reveal my ignorance how should your name be pronounced? Is it (in Brit. Eng.) Mar-yah-no-fich? Is the ć common in S. German and Austrian names?

I too am curious as to how you pronounce your name, and am grateful to Kron for asking.

I for one would say "mar-ja-no-vitch", with a soft -j, but what do I know about names from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, eh? I just live down under the sea, in a octopus' garden in the shade.

David, I have seen the Bulgarian er gol'am spelled with a circumflex a (e.g. David Meladenov, Balgarski Talkoven Recnik), but I am not surprised to hear that a micron is also used. For that matter, Daniels and Bright's "The World's Writing Systems" (Oxford, 1996) uses a tilde, p. 703. Which sort of splits the difference, or straddles the fence.

As usual, I'm not sure how we got on to the Hapsburgs in under fifteen comments when the original topic was Australia (i.e. not Austria).

I mean the connection is obviously Macedonia, but the Hapsburg Empire takes up a lot of space here in relation to its...I don't know: something or other, political influence probably. Not that I'm complaining, you understand. Would life be worth living without the croissant, the Sachertorte, the Linzertorte Wittgenstein, the Hungarian sausage and so on? I think not. Not to mention Karl Kraus, Freud, Adolf Loos, Otto Wagner, music. Then there's Orson Welles as Harry Lime, am I getting carried away, perhaps? He's not strictly Hapsburg.

By the way the Linzertorte Wittgenstein is not an old Viennese confection, it's just missing a comma.