Everyday perceptions deformed by, then transcribed into, more poetry…
Around the World in 80 Words
I acquired body and spirit, and a voice for the body or spirit or both – I don’t really get
where I was, voice could have come first and
voiced body and spirit.
Only why create a body? Spirit, I mean, why create a spirit.
Anyway, same difference… bald or faded; they pass each other in the halls of my voice
and after its fashion lose themselves in conversation, till one day
they settle down together, maybe.
74, 75, 76, […] 80.
I Concocted a World
I concocted a world that outgrew me and exploded in thousands of vibrations I couldn’t make out, though I strained my ear as far as its far side.
What more could I want on this merciless morning, each minute more melodious
than the last, the sky regally decorated after a night that didn’t pass
by, yet left the earth unmoved, perhaps just overly dusted
with frost.
Cloud
Tra la la la la
I had two grandmothers
Both are dead
I had three grandfathers
Everyone’s dead
Tra la la la la!
It Hurts That It Hurts
What else?
In late fall I take a train to my parents
and it rains, icicles form behind the glass
in the shapes of holy moly.
Youth made out alright at first;
you could nail it more precisely,
singing of flames and love.
Do I think
we’ll get ahead of this truth like we would an old dog,
repeating what we already know, over and over?
and furthermore: I think you should write,
your […] awaits readerly dazzlement;
now it’s quiet time for this poem. Yes,
yesterday’s sorrow was really something.
I nightwalked, the saw’s song fading from my street.
Translated by Benjamin Paloff
Everyday perceptions deformed by, then transcribed into, more poetry…
Translation rights: Anna Matysiak, wydawnictwo.convivo@gmail.com
What would the world look like if linguistic relativity – the often problematic notion that our experience is moulded and delimited by the words, rules and patterns available to us in language – applied not only to our everyday communication, but to the formal preoccupations of the lyric poet? What if poetry were construed not as the artful reshaping of language, but as a native language unto itself, so that the verbal economy, formal repetitions, broken lines and aural echoes that are the stuff of lyric were also how one experienced a meeting with friends, a stroll down the street or memories of dead relatives?
Piotr Janicki’s extraordinary seventh collection, OTIC KANJI RIP, offers us a glimpse of just such an existence. This expansive, gorgeously conceived book takes us on a long walk through the poet’s experience of familiar relationships and spaces, where the experience itself is hemmed in by poetic form. Words, along with the images and emotions they might otherwise express, break where the line demands. Ellipses mark silences imposed not by ignorance or fear, but by strict adherence to word counts. The result is a mesmerising, consistently moving tour of one man’s everyday life simultaneously celebrated and mourned within and against the language available to him – limited and ephemeral, mundane yet mysterious, casual while wonderfully suggestive. As much as we might wish that we are universes unto ourselves, Janicki suggests that we are only ever successive combinations of the material available to us. Even the book’s title is an anagram of the poet’s own name. But, as Janicki convincingly demonstrates, there’s a whole lot you can do with that.
Benjamin Paloff
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”
