Without End: New and Selected Poems

by Adam Zagajewski

Book Overview

The best work of one of Poland's greatest younger poets I love to swim in the sea, which keeps talking to itself in the monotone of a vagabond who no longer recalls exactly how long he's been on the road. Swimming is like prayer: palms join and part, join and part almost without end. - from "On Swimming" This selection draws from Adam Zagajewski's English-language collections, both in and out of print; it also includes work from his early books, Communique...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374220964
• ISBN13: 9780374220969
• Release Date: February 2002
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Drops of eternity, grams of amazement

The masterpiece of the volume is perhaps "To Go to Lvov," a poem that contains some bold strokes of language : if lances of trees -- of poplar and ash -- still breathe aloud like Indians, and if streams mumble their dark Esperanto, and grass snakes like soft signs in the Russian language disappear into thickets. The poem called "Autumn" gives us a view not mellow or pastoral, but one which compares the season to death; more to the point, to an invading "Red Army" with "cold bayonets" and a "keen sickle." In "You Are My Silent Brethren," addressed to the dead, we have these lines : You'd think it would be easy, living. All you need is a fistful of earth, a boat, a nest, a jail, a little breath, some drops of blood, and longing. Another poem asks, "What is salvation if there is no threat?" Poets are depicted as "literary rats," "an atheist epoch's Benedictines, missionaries of easy despair" who are : compensated in small, worthless gold coin, and with the moment of bliss when metaphor's flame welds two free-floating objects, when a hawk lands, or a tax inspector makes the sign of the cross. On a small scale, there is the poignant poem "Fruit," dedicated to Czeslaw Milosz, and of a quiet, sad magnificence. We will not quote from it, but will recommend it to the reader for its muted excellence. There is much that is elegiac here (tributes to Joseph Brodsky, Zbigniew Herbert, Franz Schubert, and in many poems, the month of September), but there is also -- frequently -- the abrupt verbal startlement we associate with the comic. There are phrases here and there that remind us of the light, deft surrealism of say, Charles Simic, who blurbs this book; but Zagajewski's achivement, to this reader's mind, surpasses Simic's. Zagajewski is agile, audacious, and we feel, profoundly serious ("Try to Praise the Mutilated World"). It is perhaps unjust to Zagajewski to attempt a review after only a second reading of this collection; so, this review may be edited further as more excellences are uncovered and imprinted upon the mind.

Outstanding Poetry

Wow--this is really something. Zagajewski's work is terrific and this collection brings together poems from a number of this talented and insightful poet's works. If you want insight, irony, surprise and wit in your poetry, Zagajewski's really got it. My favorite is his his 11-line poem "The Soul." We know we're not allowed to use your name. We know you're inexpressible, anemic, frail, and suspect . . . But yes--the soul exists--refusing to go away. You know, poetry books these days can cost quite alot, and you find you've read through them in a sitting. I'm not really complaining--the price of a movie has gone up, too, and I never turn down going to a movie because of it. But this book is a huge value--278 pages of fantastic poems. It's impossible to comment on the quality of the translations, given that I don't know Polish--but the fact that they are such good poetry even after translation says alot. Two of the translators, Benjamin Ivry and C.K. Williams are poets and Williams a Pulitzer Prize winner. This is poetry of rare insight and power.

Superb Poetry

This is a marvelous collection of poetry. It earns my highest recommendation. Zagajewski is one of the more interesting poets on the scene today.This collection opens with "To See": "I had to see, and not to just know, to see clearly the sight and fires of a single world...my brethren in the shallow sand; the earth still turns above you...."Other lovely poems are: "Dead Sparrow," "Speak Softly," "December," "Death of a Pianist," "Twenty Five Years," "The World's Prose," "Treatise on Emptiness," Try to Praise a Mutilated World," and "The Creation of the World."Z's verse is economic and spare. His word craft creates deep images that are world-conscious, and they offer us a phenomenal awareness of ourselves. A good poet begins in metaphysical wonderment, and that is fulfilled here.It seems that Z. looks past our blinking lids and bloodshot eyes to witness the barren cavity in which the human soul resides. And when that examination is found wanting in the discovery of spiritual emptiness, we look to the world and see ragged refugees on detoured paths to nowhere.I also recommend: R. Hass, B. Collins, Z. Herbert, C. Milosz, R. Jeffers, S. Heaney, A. Rich, and W. Szymborska.