Experimenting with the opacity of various discourses, Cyranowicz’s conceptual poetry at once enacts and negates their mechanical hold on our lived experience
the mechanical turning around and around
after a course of events coiling up into rope tie gag
the mechanical intrusiveness of hands waving for everything’s sake
faces contrived mechanically with grimaces
while waving on platform curbs ideas deform
and after each coup of the arm another coup
against oneself a person personality one’s turn
automatic machinations of reflexes directions
as the left always wants the right and the right is drawn to the left
and hits into a tree a streetlight thud
with momentum manipulations of handwheels
limply pulled
into sequences of inconsequential events like head-on collisions of connotations
iterations in constraints of multiplying enumerating complaints
when clothes put on inside out turn the body lining
to the outside of mechanically distracted limits
of defence mechanisms
what cannot ever be won she already lost
she had no luck in games of chance
not for her the dice adult roulettes of humanity’s excitations
with no advice to take head-on
lottery offices apparatuses of unpredictability
in phantom tombola frustrations
sharpening nails on scratchcards to fight for anything
executing meticulous destructions of risk
when bingo shoots out hitting the knee
a game with pawns across the board tears tension apart to splinters
one loses until the next trauma
in gambling’s determination a card
peering out clumsily like a magic spell
fulfilment is ultimately excess
like impatient tonnes of tokens burying the dog in the manger
forced to limit herself navigating relations
she keeps riding her bike down the street thwarting plans
provoking aggression to irritate regression for someone to finally again
punish condemn and derail all symptoms of reflection on what is crucial
to survive vacant buildings one needs to fall asleep nothing more
when one can’t pull it together unremarkably
drawing conclusions like thread from a cocoon of isolation
she will take no precaution or prescription
rather suffocate with expectation of the unexpected
off the charts exploring compassion and what’s more
she needs to limit without resentment without a breach of contract
to break bitter ice
Translated by Małgorzata Myk
Experimenting with the opacity of various discourses, Cyranowicz’s conceptual poetry at once enacts and negates their mechanical hold on our lived experience
Translation rights: Maria Cyranowicz, mariacyranowicz@gmail.com
In Maria Cyranowicz’s most recent collection machinations, the poet’s long-standing critique of the avant-garde and her commitment to formalist experimentation gain new momentum. Conceptually injecting cool surfaces of found language with a strikingly intimate, emotional register, machinations expands the poetic protocols of her previous acclaimed book den.presja (deepression) (2009). Her poetry performs a vital inquiry into the machinations underlying discourse and poetic language itself, teasing the porous boundaries of the mechanical vs. non-mechanical as well as the expressive vs. non-expressive.
Cyranowicz’s new poetry returns to her earlier intention to investigate the compulsive perseveration, rather than perseverance, of the avant-garde; its impulse long lost, its afterimage strangely resurfacing. It is also, much more ominously, a reminder that poetry is fully implicated in actively reproducing the ongoing machinations of the current cultural politics, amputating any possibility of unmediated experience or privacy in the public sphere. At the same time, her writing is also a corrosive that feeds on these machinations, tracing the cracks in their traumatic lining by turning each layer inside out, constantly shifting their apparently dead structures, inspecting what the different facets reveal, and pointing to those that are still alive and worth salvaging.
Małgorzata Myk
Selected samples
She climbed her first peaks in a headscarf at a time when women in the mountains were treated by climbers as an additional backpack. It was with her that female alpinism began! She gained recognition in a spectacular way. The path was considered a crossing for madmen. Especially since the tragic accident in 1929, preserved … Continue reading “Halina”
First, Marysia, a student of an exclusive private school in Warsaw’s Mokotów district, dies under the wheels of a train. Her teacher, Elżbieta, tries to find out what really happened. She starts a private investigation only soon to perish herself. But her body disappears, and the only people who have seen anything are Gniewomir, a … Continue reading “Wound”
A young girl, Regina Wieczorek, was found dead on the beach. She was nineteen years old and had no enemies. Fortunately, the culprit was quickly found. At least, that’s what the militia think. Meanwhile, one day in November, Jan Kowalski appears at the police station. He claims to have killed not only Regina but also … Continue reading “Penance”
The year is 1922. A dangerous time of breakthrough. In the Eastern Borderlands of the Republic of Poland, Bolshevik gangs sow terror, leaving behind the corpses of men and disgraced women. A ruthless secret intelligence race takes place between the Lviv-Warsaw-Free City of Gdańsk line. Lviv investigator Edward Popielski, called Łysy (“Hairless”), receives an offer … Continue reading “A Girl with Four Fingers”
This question is closely related to the next one, namely: if any goal exists, does life lead us to that goal in an orderly manner? In other words, is everything that happens to us just a set of chaotic events that, combined together, do not form a whole? To understand how the concept of providence … Continue reading “Order and Love”
The work of Józef Łobodowski (1909-1988) – a remarkable poet, prose writer, and translator, who spent most of his life in exile – is slowly being revived in Poland. Łobodowski’s brilliant three- volume novel, composed on an epic scale, concerns the fate of families and orphans unmoored by the Bolshevik Revolution and civil war and … Continue reading “Ukrainian Trilogy: Thickets, The Settlement, The Way Back”
