Adam Zagajewski
and also a certain calm madness.
I found, much later, a moment's joy
and melancholy's dark contentment. In True Life, Adam Zagajewski, one of the most gifted poets of our time and a revolutionary Polish writer and thinker, turns his gaze to the past with piercing clarity and a tone of wry, lyrical melancholy. He captures the rhythms of a city street on the page and the steady beat of the passage of time against it ("Roads cannot be destroyed // Even if peonies cover them / smelling like eternity") and writes of the endless struggle between stasis and change, between movement and stillness ("We knew / it would be the same / as always // It would all go back to normal"). Mary Oliver called Zagajewski "the most pertinent, impressive, meaningful poet of our time," and Philip Boehm wrote in The New York Times Book Review that his poems "pull us from whatever routine threatens to dull our senses, from whatever might lull us into mere existence." True Life, first published in Polish in 2019 and fluidly translated into English by Clare Cavanagh, reveals the astonishing depth of his insight and artistry.
Author: Adam Zagajewski
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 02/21/2023
Pages: 80
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.45lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.70w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9780374601560
Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 12/19/2022
Booklist 01/06/2023
Library Journal 02/01/2023 pg. 81
Books
True Life: Poems -- Adam Zagajewski, Hardcover
A stunning, intimate collection by the late, great Polish poet Adam Zagajewski.
. . . I think I sought wisdom (without resignation) in poemsand also a certain calm madness.
I found, much later, a moment's joy
and melancholy's dark contentment. In True Life, Adam Zagajewski, one of the most gifted poets of our time and a revolutionary Polish writer and thinker, turns his gaze to the past with piercing clarity and a tone of wry, lyrical melancholy. He captures the rhythms of a city street on the page and the steady beat of the passage of time against it ("Roads cannot be destroyed // Even if peonies cover them / smelling like eternity") and writes of the endless struggle between stasis and change, between movement and stillness ("We knew / it would be the same / as always // It would all go back to normal"). Mary Oliver called Zagajewski "the most pertinent, impressive, meaningful poet of our time," and Philip Boehm wrote in The New York Times Book Review that his poems "pull us from whatever routine threatens to dull our senses, from whatever might lull us into mere existence." True Life, first published in Polish in 2019 and fluidly translated into English by Clare Cavanagh, reveals the astonishing depth of his insight and artistry.
Author: Adam Zagajewski
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 02/21/2023
Pages: 80
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.45lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.70w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9780374601560
Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 12/19/2022
Booklist 01/06/2023
Library Journal 02/01/2023 pg. 81
Product Attributes: Adam Zagajewski, European, Farrar, Hardcover, Poetry, Straus and Giroux