The Good Wife

by Georgia Scott

62 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Georgia Scott is an American poet and novelist from Boston. Educated in the USA and England, she is a former Fulbright and university professor who now writes full time. One of her first poetry readings was at a banned meeting of Solidarity in the 1980s. At one of her more recent readings, she tied up her London audience with red tape. A minimalist with a maximalist love for beaches, Mel Brooks, and baklava, Georgia currently lives in Gdansk, Poland.

Reviews

[Georgia Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don't be confused by reviews in Czech. These poems are in English - although many of them have been translated into other languages - and are a first hand account of living in Poland in the final years of communism. Earning comparisons to T. S. Eliot from the British critic Philip Hobsbaum to praise from the Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, The Good Wife includes the poem 'The Witness' which John le Carre claimed put chills up his back.

The Witness

It's been awful. Haven't you heard?
For the past two weeks they've been calling.
My God I haven't slept.

They keep calling
late at night. The first time
they said there'd been an accident
I should go to the station and make a report.
I said I'd seen no accident.
And they said come down
or we'll come for you ourselves.

So I went.
They said I was a witness.
I said to what? And they laughed.
They said did I ever want a passport
did I ever want to go abroad again.

Then I laughed.

You know
(she said, taking a sip from her glass)
the littlest things can matter -
when a colleague goes to lunch
or takes a break.
The littlest things.

More coffee? Or was yours tea?

[Lucie Pelcakova · Rating 5 out of 5]

V této sbírce Scott píše o Polsku po druhé světové válce a začátku komunismu. Spojuje vzpomínky spolu s tím, co prožívalo spoustu lidí - radost z konce války, ale i strach z toho, co přijde; později i strach z toho, co se děje. Básně jsou lehce pochopitelné, nepoužívá nejasný jazyk. Celkově je kniha krásná a plná emocí. Jednoznačně doporučuju.

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think i was just to dumb to understand this