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Zagajewski’s Symphony
Adam Zagajewski’s extraordinary Slight Exaggeration, translated by Clare Cavanagh, has proven to be one of those books that require slow reading, pondering, backtracking, breaking out the dictionary on occasion, or the encyclopedia. Late in the book I realized that it seems to be structured symphonically. Themes are announced, interwoven, diminished for a time, then they resurface, converge, augment one another, reach a crescendo. The effect is inspiring. In any case, here are some final selections. Read some others here and here. Better yet: Buy the book.Read More
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Isms and the Liberation from True Knowledge
After observing that “someone who longs for particulars and seizes them in his writing is thinking in the best possible way,” Adam Zagajewski, a page or so later in Slight Exaggeration (as beamed into English by Clare Cavanagh), writes: We rarely consider how much we’ve lost by way of the systematization of intellectual life over the last century. In an age of ideology, systems, endless -isms, have taken hold everywhere, even, or rather especially, in universities.Read More
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Stendhal to Zagajewski to Me … to You
From Adam Zagajewski‘s memoir (self-investigation?), Slight Exaggeration, in Clare Cavanagh‘s beautiful translation: Stendhal in Souvenirs d’égotisme: “Le génie poétique est mort, mais le génie du soupçon est venu au monde” (The genius of poetry has left us, the spirit of suspicion takes its place—in my loose translation). Is it true? Yes, as to the spirit of suspicion, and it’s also true that poetry and suspicion must always do battle, a vicious war in which prisoners are slain without mercy, flouting Geneva conventions.Read More
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Delicious Advice for Aspiring Poets
From the inimitable Wisława Szymborska, Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet who produced a column for a newspaper called Literary Life. She answered letters from everyday people who wanted to write poetry—a sort of “Dear Wisława” relationship that she handled with intelligence, humor, and care. Here are a few selections from her column, translated by Clare Cavanagh and courtesy of The Poetry Foundation.Read More
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Adios, Wisława Szymborska
“Poland’s 1996 Nobel Prize-winning poet Wisława Szymborska, whose simple words and playful verse plucked threads of irony and empathy out of life, has died. She was 88. […] The Nobel award committee’s citation called her the ‘Mozart of poetry,’ a woman who mixed the elegance of language with ‘the fury of Beethoven’ and tackled serious subjects with humor.” More here. * * * Hiroshige Utagawa, “Evening Showerat Atake and the Great Bridge” PEOPLE ON THE BRIDGEby Wisława Szymborska(tr.Read More
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Another Różewicz Poem About Poetry
THE MYSTERY OF THE POEMby Tadeusz Różewicz once somewherelong agoI read a poemby Eminowiczwhose first nameI subsequently forgot this was before the war then for half a centuryI never encounteredhis poetry he would come to mindevery few yearsthen return to oblivion Chess? yes I read the poemin “Pion” magazine Chess? not ChessChessI think it was Chess the poem rattled about in my headlike a death-watch beetle(that was all I needed!) two years agoI found myself in Krakówwith Czesław Miłoszin Ludwik Solski’s Dressing Room Mrs.Read More
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Ta-dáy-oosh Wo-zhyáy-vich’s “philosopher’s stone”
Tadeusz Różewicz philosopher’s stoneby Tadeusz Różewicz we need to put this poem to sleepbefore it startsphilosophizingbefore it startsfishingfor complimentscalled to lifein a moment of forgettingsensitive to wordsglancesit looks toa philosopher’sstone for helpo passerby hasten your stepdo not lift up the stonethere a blank versenakedturnsto ashes_______________________From a group of poems by Różewicz (translated by Joanna Trzeciak) published in the lovely Little Star Journal (see here and here).Read More
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Szymborska’s “The Joy of Writing”
Wisława SzymborskaPhoto: Adam Golec©Agenca Gazeta THE JOY OF WRITINGby Wisława Szymborska Why does this written doe bound through these written woods?For a drink of written water from a springwhose surface will xerox her soft muzzle?Why does she lift her head; does she hear something?Perched on four slim legs borrowed from the truth,she pricks up her ears beneath my fingertips.Silence—this word also rustles across the pageand parts the boughsthat have sprouted from the word “woods.” Lying in wait, set to pounce on the blank page,asre letters up to no good,clutches of clauses so subordinatethey’ll never let her get away.Read More
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Outside and Inside the Poetic Experience
Poetic form as understood from the outside, that is theoretically (using the sonnet as example): The effect of Shakespeare’s sonnet differs altogether from the effect of its content when stated in prose, because the meaning of the sonnet is rooted in a host of poetic subsidiaries* which are disregarded in the prose account of the sonnet’s content. The sonnet as a work of art is not merely enriched and altogether recast by its poetic subsidiaries; these subsidiaries also serve to cut the sonnet off from the person of the poet. —Michael Polanyi and Harry Prosch, Meaning, p. 83.Read More
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Lvov to Telos to Me to You
A new collection by the great Polish poet Adam Zagajewski, entitled Eternal Enemies, has just appeared from Farrar, Straus and Giroux—and it will knock your socks off.Read More
Joseph Hutchison, Colorado Poet Laureate 2014-2019, has published 20 collections of poems and edited or co-edited three poetry anthologies. He currently directs two master’s-level programs for University College at the University of Denver: Professional Creative Writing and Arts & Culture Management. Joe lives with his wife, Melody Madonna, in the mountains southwest of Denver, Colorado, the city where he was born. 
