Distant Lands: An Anthology of Poets Who Don t Exist

by Agnieszka Kuciak, Karen Kovacik (Translation)

"Mystical, mischievous, and musical, Kuciak enchants me with the scope of her imagination, her whimsical flirtations with identity, theology, and the very nature of human existence. I am delighted by her lyrical flare, her wit, and her remarkable ability to be both one and many poets, or one poet with twenty one voices."—Nin Andrews This faux anthology of twenty-one invented poets belongs in the company of world literature's distinguished fabulists—Fernando Pessoa and Italo Calvino—in blurring the boundary between the textual and actual worlds. Agnieszka Kuciak lives in Poznan, Poland, and is the author of two collections of poetry.

Genres: Poetry

148 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2013

Reviews

[Jonfaith · Rating 3 out of 5]

The well-read beggar doesn’t notice
God has tossed into his cap
that day’s gold coin.

Sometimes you spend $6 and aren’t sure of the result. This was the case sometimes when I cared about craft beer; that pint of sea salt habanero ale wasn’t exactly life-changing. Alas such was my approach earlier when I began this collection: a grad student exercise in Pessoa heteronyms.

Alas while not exhilarated by the two line biographical sketches, the verse manages to be glib, philosophical and in translation! I did appreciate the motifs on resurrection, such was welcomed on a blistering sabbath. Amen.

[weronika · Rating 4 out of 5]

kupiły mnie wiersze o depresji (co chyba nie świadczy najlepiej o mojej głowie)

[Cody]

really cool playing with structure, meta about being meta. “a former buddhist addresses the world” and sylvia’s “***” made my heart happy

[Peter Landau · Rating 4 out of 5]

The idea of a collection of poems by poets who don't exist sounds like a Polish joke, but in fact is a work of art by the Polish poet Agnieszka Kuciak. I had been thinking why can't poetry be completely abstract, non-representational like the movement in art, just using letters and words as pigment to color a completely new way of reading that wasn't reading at all? I guess it's been tried by Hugo Ball and other experimental and conceptual poets, with varying degrees of success, because letters and words are already symbols and our minds can't help but array them into some rational manner. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but DISTANT LANDS: AN ANTHOLOGY OF POETS WHO DON'T EXIST somehow satisfied that desire for a pure sensation untethered by reason or sense. Not that these poems are unreasonable or senseless, far from it, together they develop themes and shared imagery and cohere in a way a collection can't help, but Kuciak's choice to speak through the voices of characters, to create a movement where there was only stillness, spoke to my interest in poetry that moves beyond. Beyond what? That is a good question. I'll get back to you on that one.

[Michael Brockley · Rating 5 out of 5]

DISTANT LANDS: AN ANTHOLOGY OF POETS WHO DON'T EXIST by Agnieszka Kuciak and translated by Karen Kovacik us a poetic treat. Filled with puns and intriguing rhymes, this volume meshes the Catholic secular and the sexual desires of ordinary folk through the voices of poets who are the brainchildren of Kuciak's fertile imagination. The reader finds a sly humor in the poems about the buried dead who aren't particularly keen on being wafted into the Magnificent Presence. Herein are poems by a pilgrim and a schizophrenic and a housewife and a poet more concerned about swimming than reading poems to the public. Kuciak and Kovacik have crafted a stellar collection by creating a community of disparate voices; this diversity energizes the language so that each poem becomes a lively discovery. The moral of DISTANT LANDS is discover, not your voice, but your voices.

[Aimee · Rating 5 out of 5]

It doesn't get any more creative than this: an anthology of made-up poets. They have bios. They have personalities, styles. They even have hangups. So, yeah, now that's been done, and brilliantly so. Kudos to Karen Kovacik as well for what sounds like it must have been a challenging translation.