Book Reviews
Winter 1998
Three Polish Poets, Two Nobel Prizes
Facing the River: New Poems by Czeslaw Milosz. Trans. by the author and Robert Hass. Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press, 1995. 66 pages. $22, hardbound. Talking to My Body by Anna […]
Poetry
Summer 2001
Tenderness
From the Polish. In the end tenderness what am I to do with you tenderness for stones birds and people you ought to sleep in the hand behind the eye […]
Poetry
Summer 2001
In a City
From the Polish. In an eastern city where I won't return there is a winged stone light and huge lightning strikes this winged stone I close my eyes to remember […]
Poetry
Summer 2001
The High Castle
From the Polish. To Leszek Elektrowicz with enduring friendship 1. As a reward an excursion to the High Castle before we reach its foot a trip in a trolleycar […]
Translations
Winter 1999
The Wolf and the Sheep
—I’ve got you, said the wolf, and yawned. The sheep turned its teary eyes toward him. —Do you have to eat me? Is it really necessary? —Unfortunately I must. This […]
Translations
Winter 1999
A Suicide
He was so theatrical. He stood in front of the mirror in a black suit, a flower in his buttonhole. He put the instrument in his mouth, waited for the […]
Translations
Winter 1999
Home
A home above the year’s seasonshome of children animals and applesa square of empty spaceunder an absent star home was the telescope of childhoodthe skin of emotiona sister’s cheekbranch of […]
Translations
Winter 1999
Clock
In appearance it is the peaceful face of a miller, full, shiny as an apple. Only a single dark hair moves on it. But when one looks inside: a nest […]
An Apocrypha
Summer 1984
The Gordian Knot
Zbigniew Herbert, the well-known Polish poet, is currently completing a collection of prose pieces that he calls “apocrypha.” Syntheses of the short story and the essay, they contest traditional or […]