false 6164089 1 <p>The first appearance in English of the Polish poet Janusz Szuber, hailed as the greatest discovery in Polish poetry of the late twentieth century when, in his late forties, he began publishing his work. Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska has called him a “superb poet,” and Zbigniew Herbert said that “his poetry speaks to the hard part of the soul.”<br><br>An intensely elegant poet whose poems are short and accessible, Szuber’s work is poised between life itself in all its messy glory and the rigors of making poetry—between the devastations of history and the quiet act of observing our place in it all. “Grammar is my / adopted country,” Szuber explains in one poem, yearning at the same time toward the physical, the breathing world: “I’d prefer something less ambiguous: / the bony parachutes of leaves, the flame of goosefoot, from a frosty page / A star bent over me.” With lovely, astute translations by Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough, <i>They Carry a Promise </i>is an exciting introduction to the work of a contemporary Polish master.<br><b><br>About a Boy Stirring Jam<br></b>A wooden spoon for stirring jam,<br>Dripping sweet tar, while in the pan<br>Plum magma’s bubbles blather.<br>For someone who can’t grasp the whole<br>There’s salvation in the remembered detail.<br>What, back then, did I know about <i>that</i>?<br>The real, hard as a diamond,<br>Was to happen in the indefinable<br>Future, and everything seemed<br>Only a sign of what was to come. How naive.<br>Now I know inattention is an unforgivable sin<br>And each particle of time has an ultimate dimension.</p> 6343396 19 5 2009 They Carry a Promise: Selected Poems 0 0 3 0 0 0 false false Thu Aug 27 23:29:44 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 27 23:29:44 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Fri Jul 17 18:24:59 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 17 18:24:59 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Sat May 09 20:24:14 -0700 2009 Sat May 09 20:24:15 -0700 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=6164089