Metaf. 20 wierszy o położeniu

Wojciech Kass is a poet writing from the province. He serves as the director of a museum dedicated to the memory of another poet – Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński, located in Pranie among the Masurian Lake District. This is a charming spot, peaceful, far from the uproar of large centres, although pulsing with activity. The newest volume of Kass’s poetry, as the subtitle 20 wierszy o położeniu [20 Poems of Setting] suggests – consists of twenty verses ‘set’ in particular areas. Areas for humans – areas both municipal and metaf (this is the title) – metaphysical… 

Sandomierz, the Cities of W. and O., Lake Nidzkie, these are only some of the places mentioned by name (or only partially discovered names). However, the most important ‘setting’ of the cycle, perhaps, is a totally different one – an interior area, one might say. It is a setting in which the spirit is realised, the spirit of the newcomer and the spirit of the locality itself. There, where we penetrate, we are accompanied by that ‘tender emotion / gazing about creation, that call of mediation’ [czułe poruszanie, / rozglądanie po stworzonym, zew namysłu] as he states in the poem Raid [Łapanka]. We set off in search of the spirit, the domain of which is a dynamic, which slays inanition. 

Kass is a clever poet; he knows the paths to lead the reader down to interesting places… He also knows that one cannot provide ready answers (who can?). One may simply point out the route; about the goal of the journey, it’s better to keep silent. If in the first verse he writes ‘no one ever found that one word / no one knew what happened’ [nikt nie znajdował tego jedynego słowa, / nikt nie wiedział, co się wydarzyło] in the second half of the volume he continues with this thought, bringing to an end his summing up of that which is visible, sensible, tangible and audible, with the statement that ‘there escaped absolutely / nothing’ [że nie wymykało się / nic]. And in this ‘nothing’ there is, after all, everything!