Sobbing Superpower

Selected Poems of Tadeusz Róźewicz

3 May 2013

Territory Rights — Worldwide.

Tadeusz Rózewicz (Author), Joanna Trzeciak (Translator)

With a Foreword by Edward Hirsch

Description

"An anti-poet relentlessly, even ruthlessly determined to tell the truth, however painful it may be."—Edward Hirsch

Widely held to be the most influential Polish poet of a generation that includes Czeslaw Milosz and Wislawa Szymborska, Tadeusz Rózewicz gives voice in the sharpest, most disturbing way to the crisis of values that has plagued our civilization. Joanna Trzeciak's new translation displays Rózewicz's supernatural simplicity, his stark diction and sudden turns.

From "regression into the primordial soup"
     finally I too came into the world
     in the year 1921 and suddenly . . .
     atchoo! time passes I am old and forgot where I put my glasses
     I forgot there was
     history Caesar Hitler Mata Hari
     Stalin capitalism communism
     Einstein Picasso Al Capone
     Alka Seltzer Al Qaeda

Reviews

"Striking . . . chilling. . . . [Rozewicz’s work] embodies that particular anxiety and familiar sense of diminishment we still associate with being ‘modern.’" — The Nation

"Rozewicz is that rare character—a skeptic as full of passion as of intelligence, of warmth as wariness." — judges’ citation, Griffin Poetry Prize

"Instead of answers, the poet offers only an examination. Like it or not, he says, this is all we have: a fragment, a glimpse, a rustle." — New Republic

Also By: Joanna Trzeciak View all by author...

Also By: Edward Hirsch View all by author...

Paperback

9780393345551

157 x 236 mm • 368 pages

£15.99

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