Tibor Weiner Sennyey: Bees and Death, or What to Tell the Bees

"color matters, all that swirling force, / and detail too, you need a starting point, / a mite inside the unfathomable, / a touch of human within the divine." – Two poems from Júlia Lázár, in Dani Dányi's translation.

A slinking, muddy, roadside horror of a tale from Péter Fritsi, master of all things dark, creepy, and Hungarian, translated by Milán Potkovácz.

"Nowhere you are. How empty is the world. / A garden chair, recliner aside hurled. / Amongst sharp stones my shadow clinks a sound. / I am tired. I stick out from the ground." János Pilinszky's Apocryph, translated by Kinga Williams.

We continue our focus on July's author of the month, Eszter T. Molnár, with two original-English poems simply bursting with the bustling darkness of (human?) nature.

We kick off our author of the month focus on Eszter T. Molnár with Off-Season, a sweltering Balaton noir steeped in sunscreen, mafia mouthpieces, and political intrigue, translated by Austin Wagner. It is the opening story of her 2025 collection Landscape Before Gunshot.

An excerpt from Gyula Krúdy's novella Autumn Meeting, exemplifying his sharp wit through Rizili, a charming yet ruthless socialite who leads a suspended jockey on an intoxicating night through Budapest’s City Parkone. One of three novellas in the recently published collection Mrs. Kleofas's Rooster by Gyula Krúdy, translated by John Batki and published by Seagull Books.

An excerpt from Lili Kemény's No, in a translation by Ilona Kappanyos, which looks back on memories from the author's premature childhood. The author describes the hybrid, autobiographical novel, which became a sensation in Hungary and won the 2024 Margó Prize for best debut, as "a concentrated account of twenty-five years of personal – aesthetic, ethical, political, sexual – experiences ... a bundle of energy".

To commemorate 90 years since the birth of Hungarian poet Ottó Orbán, we share three poems on ageing, the future and man's fondness for his own manias, in George Szirtes' translation.

'Without tenderness, / I am no more / than my body's / ˈmeɪd.' – Six poems from Anna Zilahi's recent collection Gyengédség (Tenderness), translated by John Bátki and the author.

"Precisely 21.26 grams. In the end that was how much he managed to measure. For all his best efforts he was able to provide evidence of barely an ounce of immortality." – An excerpt from Róbert Milbacher's Bitter Waters (Keserű víz), the Hungarian laureate for the inaugural Visegrad Literary Award, in Peter Sherwood's translation.

"It’s neither dawn, nor quite dusk. / There is a language / in which this is what my name means." – Two poems from Ultraibolya (Ultraviolet), the 2022 debut poetry collection by Réka Ágnes Tóth, in translation by Elizabeth Lukács Chesla.

"Encouragement was his middle name. There could be no hope of compiling the endless list of scholars, editors, poets and translators whose labours he supported, unfailing in his generosity and his punctilious, never unduly indulgent evaluation." – A touching tribute to Ádám Nádasdy from his dear friend and frequent translator, Christopher Whyte.

"They tell you a lot in school. They teach us how to think about our own lives through certain narratives. They teach us how to organize large amounts of information. They teach us how the menstrual cycle works and how to use protection. But no one ever teaches us how to be alone and what to do when someone tries to hold your hand." – A short essay from Tímea Turi in which she looks back (fondly?) on the angst and awkwardness of our teenage years, translated by Lola Kadas.

"A flutter like sails, / it's easy enough / to blame the weather for / our inadequacies" – three poems from Kata Csordás' debut poetry volume, The Joy of Excess, in Dani Dányi's translation.

"But how did you know from / whence the wind and to where / the sun? Just this you learned: / better to forsake yourself, / than be the forsaken one." – We kickstart our focus on Júlia Kustos, HLO's Author of the Month for March, with two poems from her 2025 poetry volume Helpless Idols (Tehetetlen bálványok), in Austin Wagner's translation.

"On the edge of the coffee table stood a feeding bottle, the transparent sides streaked blue and speckled with purple stars. On the floor beside the table was an empty baby seat." – A chilling tale of loss and desperation by Edina Kiss, translated by Dániel Dányi.

"We created and bore meanings. We pinned suffixes onto each other over and over until we could no longer remember which one of us was the original word." – Thoughtful and personal reflections on motherhood in intricate lyrical prose by Tímea Pénzes, in Kris Herbert's translation. The last in our Slovak-Hungarian poetry series, published on HLO with the kind permission of Bázis.

"What if the slender sonnet begins to swell, / and its own inertia / eats away at the paper’s integrity, / and the insatiable material eventually tears?" – We continue our Slovak-Hungarian poetry focus with three poems from Zoltán Csehy, musings on remembrance, growth, and experience. Translated by Austin Wagner.

"The nightmares are more realistic than you’ve read, / or than what others have told you – / as a joke, of course, this is too weak to close out / anything, a poem, a day." – We continue our Slovak-Hungarian poetry focus with two horror movie-inspired poems by Gergely Vida, translated by Austin Wagner.