A Study Guide for Radmila Lazic's "Death Sentences"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Radmila Lazic's "Death Sentences," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Aug 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535821698

Book preview

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Death Sentences

Radmila Lazić

2003

Introduction

In the war-torn country of Serbia, few writers, feminists, political activists, or editors have been as influential as Radmila Lazić. One of her country's most prominent poets, Lazić has published six books of forthright, bold, and moving poetry. She has also founded and edited a magazine of feminism, edited two anthologies, and founded a civil resistance movement to protest Serbia's infamous militant leader, Slobodan Milosevic. It was not until 2003 that the first translation of her work into English, A Wake for the Living, was published. This poetry collection opens with a striking poem titled Smaknuća (Death Sentences), in which a woman tells her lover that she will not be like Ophelia, the love interest of William Shakespeare's Hamlet. Instead of Ophelia's death sentence of drowning, she says, she wants the death sentence of her lover taking off her dress and putting his arms around her