These poems immerse us in the process of how to see instead of merely what to see, blurring boundaries between poet and reader, human and non-human, art and nature
revolt of the guinea pigs
these sentences are accessible – anyone can pick them up shatter a screen
with a hammer hide their hands in their face so nothing can penetrate
do you happen to have a photo of the earth? it’s not evident
how colours change depending on distance images
sharpen in our ears in our legs tension coils
energy not for domestication
when shadows come on when structures don’t let us run
meaning evaporates in each new
experience the scent of moss seeps into cells
and it’s just an impression after all just reality a blue sphere
backed by a black void replicates wonder a pulsing pupil
seed multiplying in the soil
and there’s nothing to do but recollect bliss
ammonite shells
why are sheltered spaces so colourful? peach
rose muddy buttercup in the course of melting water
slips into air air into soil
and there’s no end no vaulting no closed space
though you can lock up a place
turn a key in a lock plucked out of a door
(that’s no longer needed)
and everywhere this scent passionfruit
and everything shimmers frayed cellophane
then suddenly a hammock appears
it’s hanging on nothing so calm without handles hooks
some pillars of books pretend they’re upright
on shelves though suspended in colours ropes
they rock the hammock stretch
two hands sprout
in order to scoop up
to get free from the span of another night
night has also been vital when air’s in short supply
and suddenly a palm tree appears
beautifully sketched it splashes like waves that don’t exist
but above it
the western sun in the landscape
what more do you need? to feel secure
glass is most interesting before it cools
what to regret?
the decaying of words clambering up a ladder onto an iceberg
the demolishing of time
now when things arise one by one when a bear
emerges from a body
you can’t always know what is real and which truth
might be useful
now when the madness of others flashes before your eyes when it forces its way into your head
and displaces your own thoughts –
how is it my dreams now so condensed
were once nightmares?
now when it’s finally possible to speak of myself
and hear my own distinctive voice
and not someone else’s vibrations reproduced by dreams
of a sea thick as down of typhoons of islands
of a ravaged coastline of snow
from a perforated stream
i walk out on a log and there’s a sprawling block
pure modernism of unadulterated lines
i stride over a wall that barely reaches my feet
(so banal and ungainly)
to locate a sunny spot full
of soaring forms and movement and life
and everything’s before me and i just
have to step into this abyss which holds no terror
Translated by Karen Kovacik
These poems immerse us in the process of how to see instead of merely what to see, blurring boundaries between poet and reader, human and non-human, art and nature
Translation rights: Jacek Żebrowski, Agata Puwalska; katalogpress24@gmail.com, apuwalska@gmail.com
Agata Puwalska’s fourth collection opens with epigraphs on the complexities of seeing from three diverse thinkers: painter and critic Władysław Strzemiński, the Polish-born mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot who developed the field of ‘fractal geometry’, and American eco-poet Forrest Gander. In her poems, the built world of commerce and art collides with the unpredictability of nature as we can see from such titles as ‘handlarz deszczu’ (‘the purveyor of rain’), ‘muzeum powietrza’ (‘museum of air’), or ‘latarnia z piorunów’ (‘lantern of lightning’).
Critics note that Puwalska builds on earlier generations of Polish avant-garde poets, both the utopic, pre-World War II ones and their more sceptical and negating postwar counterparts. The effect is a decentring of the human, or as Puwalska says in one poem: ‘the backdrop becomes the hero’. This method has an implicit ethics and politics, helping us move beyond the human gaze with its colonising impulse. Instead, the speakers in Puwalska’s poems invite readers to immerse themselves in her fractalised syntax and to make meaning together. Phrases can branch in multiple directions, belong to more than one sentence. The poems work by imagistic association, by sound. Freeing us from the rigid logic of more conventional grammatical structures, they help us see – and live – freshly.
Karen Kovacik
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”
