What do you think?
Rate this book
Colonies
"A vital new poet in the Polish language."— Adam Zagajewski Tomasz Rózycki's sixth book seems like nothing if not an attempt to grapple with Elizabeth Bishop's question, "Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?" But for Rózycki questions of travel and foreignness are never separate from those of history—personal history, political and national history, the history of things and places and trauma. "Coffee and Cigarettes" When I began to write, I didn't know
that poems would transform me, make my skin
translucent, I'd become a weary ghost
who, sleepless, roams the streets as if to ride a high till coming down, then go to bed
with rabid dawn. But light would find me still
out wandering and dropping in on friends,
flat broke, a louse, a varmint, summoned by your nakedness or even just your sighing.
And honey, how was I to know what all
these dumb poems would make of me, that you
would summon me to life, and thanks to you I would become the visible, in bed
beside you, waiting till you fall asleep. Tomasz Rózycki has published six books of poetry, including The Forgotten Keys , winner of the Koscielski Prize. He has been nominated twice for the Nike Prize, Poland's most important literary award. He lives in his hometown, Opole, with his wife and two children. Mira Rosenthal has received NEA and Fulbright grants and held fellowships at the MacDowell Colony and the Vermont Studio Center. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Ploughshares , The American Poetry Review , Slate, and the Notre Dame Review .
that poems would transform me, make my skin
translucent, I'd become a weary ghost
who, sleepless, roams the streets as if to ride a high till coming down, then go to bed
with rabid dawn. But light would find me still
out wandering and dropping in on friends,
flat broke, a louse, a varmint, summoned by your nakedness or even just your sighing.
And honey, how was I to know what all
these dumb poems would make of me, that you
would summon me to life, and thanks to you I would become the visible, in bed
beside you, waiting till you fall asleep. Tomasz Rózycki has published six books of poetry, including The Forgotten Keys , winner of the Koscielski Prize. He has been nominated twice for the Nike Prize, Poland's most important literary award. He lives in his hometown, Opole, with his wife and two children. Mira Rosenthal has received NEA and Fulbright grants and held fellowships at the MacDowell Colony and the Vermont Studio Center. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Ploughshares , The American Poetry Review , Slate, and the Notre Dame Review .
- GenresPoetry
144 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
2 people are currently reading
46 people want to read
About the author
Tomasz Różycki
33 books18 followersTomasz Różycki (ur. 29 maja 1970 w Opolu) - polski poeta, tłumacz, romanista, mieszka w Opolu. Laureat Nagrody Kościelskich, którą otrzymał za poemat "Dwanaście stacji" (2004). Publikował w licznych czasopismach w Polsce i za granicą. Jego wiersze tłumaczone były na wiele języków europejskich. Fragment utworu "Dwanaście stacji" stał się tematem rozszerzonej matury z języka polskiego w roku 2007. Tom "Kolonie" był nominowany do Literackiej Nagrody Nike w roku 2007 i znalazł się w finałowej siódemce tej nagrody. W 2010 roku został laureatem Nagrody "Kamień", przyznawanej podczas Festiwalu "Miasto Poezji".
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
Read
April 9, 2015The road is open to the east. Through closed
eyes and closed mouth a nation of a thousand
elements emigrates, atoms of silicon
and manganese, copper, coal, all that makes
the blood and constitutes the body, pneuma
and neurons, all that crosses skin at night
and passes through the wall, the border, digs
through buried places, searches for a form
-from 'The Road to India'.
eyes and closed mouth a nation of a thousand
elements emigrates, atoms of silicon
and manganese, copper, coal, all that makes
the blood and constitutes the body, pneuma
and neurons, all that crosses skin at night
and passes through the wall, the border, digs
through buried places, searches for a form
-from 'The Road to India'.
March 11, 2015
When I first read the poems from this collection I wept with the memories of emotions I had never experienced and yet recognised. It is a sequence of 77 sonnets that speak to the soul in a way that only great poets can. Its themes are wondering, exile, loss, restlessness, the present, the past....
April 1, 2025
Rózycki writes poetry that is complex, deeply personal yet vague, and requires the reader to pry it apart with dissecting tools. Unfortunately this is not the kind of poetry that I am particularly into, and over time it honestly started to feel formulaic. Poetry is such a subjective experience, so really, what do I know.
May 9, 2022
A pungent combination of flavors. Every bite is pure pleasure of imagery and idea.
September 9, 2015
I loved this book of poems because I felt I could walk from one to the next and know I was in the same neighborhood, or small town, from beginning to end. I could wander, but I would not feel lost.
It feels that in the next-to-last poem, I've come home--back to the beginning. But, of course, the old home has changed. And I have gone from being an innocent "When I began to write, I didn't know/ that poems would transform me...," to becoming a man who is in control of his destiny.
In, "The Governor's Residence," the narrator has become rich through his writing and anything he wanted has become his. He is someone who has learned to play the system and isn't quite sure what the end game is after you have everything you have ever wanted. "And day by day my fortune would increase,/ and daily I'd stock up on chocolate, butter/ that would sit there, for I would feel no hunger."
The last poem of the book, "Sea Monsters," on the other hand, tells me that the narrator in "The Governor's Residence" is Rozycki as poet, whereas in this poem, a more vulnerable, and definitely mortal Rozycki, appears. This narrator wonders if we have been alive before, so I take it that this narrator is outside of the narratives (a hermeneutic container?) found in the previous 76 poems.
There are forces here that are mysteries to the narrator: fog, sea monsters, a tide that could seize and hypnotize us. In spite of the unanswered question, "Have we been here before?" the narrator is not only willing to accept the "melancholy of illusions" he's left with, he gets "drunk" on them. He knows that it's all some combination of molecules, but the narrator has "resolved to honor/ this life, this moment of hesitation, before you tell me, No."
This is a book I will pick up again and again. I feel like Rozycki's narrator may not be my friend, but he's a good traveling companion, and what will happen to me, will happen to him. He's willing to throw in together with whoever will make the journey with him.
It feels that in the next-to-last poem, I've come home--back to the beginning. But, of course, the old home has changed. And I have gone from being an innocent "When I began to write, I didn't know/ that poems would transform me...," to becoming a man who is in control of his destiny.
In, "The Governor's Residence," the narrator has become rich through his writing and anything he wanted has become his. He is someone who has learned to play the system and isn't quite sure what the end game is after you have everything you have ever wanted. "And day by day my fortune would increase,/ and daily I'd stock up on chocolate, butter/ that would sit there, for I would feel no hunger."
The last poem of the book, "Sea Monsters," on the other hand, tells me that the narrator in "The Governor's Residence" is Rozycki as poet, whereas in this poem, a more vulnerable, and definitely mortal Rozycki, appears. This narrator wonders if we have been alive before, so I take it that this narrator is outside of the narratives (a hermeneutic container?) found in the previous 76 poems.
There are forces here that are mysteries to the narrator: fog, sea monsters, a tide that could seize and hypnotize us. In spite of the unanswered question, "Have we been here before?" the narrator is not only willing to accept the "melancholy of illusions" he's left with, he gets "drunk" on them. He knows that it's all some combination of molecules, but the narrator has "resolved to honor/ this life, this moment of hesitation, before you tell me, No."
This is a book I will pick up again and again. I feel like Rozycki's narrator may not be my friend, but he's a good traveling companion, and what will happen to me, will happen to him. He's willing to throw in together with whoever will make the journey with him.
January 8, 2017
This bilingual volume collects seventy-seven sonnets, translated by Mira Rosenthal. Some explanatory notes complete the text (pp. 157-59).
Since I have no Polish, I cannot comment on the style or sound of the poetry and am limited to responding to the subjects and, perhaps, the mood of the poems.
The poetry finds its core in loss, of home, childhood, things and people. What we may not know about Poland is that, after WWII, Germans were expelled and Poles transferred from the Ukraine and elsewhere to populate this area (Silesia) to the west. Rozycki was born well after the move, 1970, but his verse seeks out the lost inheritance, finding a mate in Czeslaw Milosz (No. 55: "The Rainy Season," pp. 110-11), who had been forced to leave Wilno as the poet's family Lwow. This poem is set on the day of Milosz's death: "At five, I got the call that he had died./ /That something had forever left the city,/and gravity, rain, literature remained" (p. 111).
I might add, considering the charged nature of any discussion of Palestinian eviction by the Zionist/Israelis (see, for example, Mahmoud Darwish), the introductory discussion of displacement en masse ("Nakba') can be revelatory about the experience of the individual.
Since I have no Polish, I cannot comment on the style or sound of the poetry and am limited to responding to the subjects and, perhaps, the mood of the poems.
The poetry finds its core in loss, of home, childhood, things and people. What we may not know about Poland is that, after WWII, Germans were expelled and Poles transferred from the Ukraine and elsewhere to populate this area (Silesia) to the west. Rozycki was born well after the move, 1970, but his verse seeks out the lost inheritance, finding a mate in Czeslaw Milosz (No. 55: "The Rainy Season," pp. 110-11), who had been forced to leave Wilno as the poet's family Lwow. This poem is set on the day of Milosz's death: "At five, I got the call that he had died./ /That something had forever left the city,/and gravity, rain, literature remained" (p. 111).
I might add, considering the charged nature of any discussion of Palestinian eviction by the Zionist/Israelis (see, for example, Mahmoud Darwish), the introductory discussion of displacement en masse ("Nakba') can be revelatory about the experience of the individual.
January 19, 2014
In Mira Rosenthal's powerful translation.
Read
January 13, 2022Kilka dobrych wierszych. Będę wracać do Różyckiego
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews