Canvas

by Adam Zagajewski, Renata Gorczynski (Contributor)

Canvas, Zagajewski's second book to appear in English, features all of this poet's distinctive traits. In these sixty-one poems, syntax explodes, masses of detail spill from profuse catalogs, lines break in ways apt but unexpected, and compressed lyrics alternate with extended riffs. European culture is the poet's native province throughout these explorations, and time is a recurrent metaphysical concern.

Genres: Poetry, Polish Literature

81 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Adam Zagajewski was a Polish poet, novelist, translator and essayist. He was awarded the 2004 Neustadt International Prize for Literature.

The Zagajeski family was expelled from Lwów by the Ukrainians to central Poland in 1945.
In 1982 he emigrated to Paris, but in 2002 he returned to Poland, and now resides in Kraków.
His poem "Try To Praise The Mutilated World", printed in The New Yorker, became famous after the 9/11 attacks.

He is considered a leading poet of the Generation of '68, or Polish New Wave (Polish: Nowa fala), and one of Poland's most prominent contemporary poets.

Source: wikipedia.com

Reviews

[James Rutenbeck]

My son and I have been reading aloud the poems of this Polish writer. Words matter a great deal to my son, an undergrad English major who cannot speak. Anthony has written about the pointlessness of so many overheard conversations, and so writing with this kind of clarity and power attracts him.

A Talk with Friedrich Nietzsche asks:

What are words, I want to ask you, what
is clarity and why do words keep burning
a century later, though the earth
weighs so much ?

I first learned of Zagajewski's poetry when I saw them on a bookshelf in the Jim Jarmusch film "Paterson."

[l]

I saw in a wood
leaves scorched by frost.
Spiders swung on long threads
as though playing with grief, and they sang:
What was, endues in imagination.
What is, waits for destruction.
- Spider's Song

[Scott Bielinski]

Zagajewski's poems are fun to read aloud. So lyrical and full of gorgeous images: "It's raining, the docile city/is swaddled in longing and fog" (from "Stones," 74). I've seen that kind of city. Maybe you have, too. Zagajewski's poetry reminds me of life's rich experiences my ingratitude helps me to forget.

In Canvas, he explores the ties between individual existence and grander, almost supra-personal forces (things like mass culture), hardly comprehensible to us: "What are words, I want to ask you, what/is clarity and why do words keep burning/a century later, though the earth/weighs so much?" (from "A Talk with Friedrich Nietzsche," 12). His poems remind us that our words are some of our most precious resources, ones that often betray us and conscript us into armies for which our feet and heart would not march.

Because there is a religious or spiritual dimension to life, it is mysterious, unquantifiable, and ephemeral. This was on my mind as I just finished re-reading Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing. Zagajewski acknowledges exactly this in many of his poems. Here's one of my favorite poems from this volume, which Zagajewski dedicates to another favorite poet of mine, Csezlaw Milosz, that teaches us exactly that.

Fruit

How unattainable life is, it only reveals
its features in memory,
in nonexistence. How unattainable
afternoons, ripe, tumultuous, leaves
bursting with sap; swollen fruit, the rustling
silks of women who pass on the other
side of the street, and the shouts of boys
leaving school. Unattainable. The simplest
apple inscrutable, round.
The crowns of tree shake in warm
currents of air. Unattainably distant mountains.
Intangible rainbows. Huge cliffs of clouds
flowing slowly through the sky. The sumptuous, unattainable afternoon. My life,
swirling, unattainable, free.

[Nevena Kotarac]

Pjesme Adama Zagajevskog su nežne kao svjetlost, kao jeka zvona u suvom ljetnjem vazduhu. Svijet je nepomičan i nestalan, kao uljana slika, začaran sopstvenom ljepotom, uhvaćen u paučinu muzike i prošlosti, trenutno ozaren milošću. Istorija šumi, neprimjetno se nameće, u praskavoj kiši jesenjeg lišća, u purpurnim sutonima, u neumornoj sparini ljeta. Dolaze rat i smrt, koji su zapravo oduvek bili tu, već nameštamo pomirljivi osmijeh, spremni na poraz, ali ipak, pričekajmo, radujmo se još malo, dopustimo još jedan okret, još jedan zagrljaj, mogućnost tajne, radost čuđenja, muziku, još samo malo muzike, još malo.
Ushićen svijetom, Zagajevski mu pjeva, voli ga i od njega se oprašta.

POKUŠAJ DA OPEVAŠ OSAKAĆENI SVET

Pokušaj da opevaš osakaćeni svet.
Ne zaboravi duge junske dane,
divlje jagode, kapi vina, rose.
Koprive koje su metodično obrastale
napuštena domaćinstva izgnanika.
Moraš opevati osakaćeni svet.
Posmatrao si otmene jahte i brodove;
jednog od njih čekalo je dugo putovanje,
drugog samo slano ništavilo.
Video si izbeglice koji su išli nikuda,
čuo krvnike koji su radosno pevali.
Dužan si da opevaš osakaćeni svet.
Ne zaboravi trenutke kada ste bili zajedno
u beloj sobi i zavesa se lelujala.
Vrati se u mislima koncertu na kome je eksplodirala muzika.
Ujesen skupljao si žir u parku
dok je lišće kružilo nad ožiljcima zemlje.
Opevaj osakaćeni svet
i sivo perce koje je izgubio drozd,
i finu svetlost koja luta, iščezava i
vraća se.

[Kristin]

My favorite book of contemporary poetry