Joanna Trzeciak has done a brilliant job translating the great Polish poet, Tadeusz Rozewicz, whose selected poems, Sobbing Superpower, have recently been published by Norton. Trzeciak has the profound ability to disappear without trace of persona into the language of this great Polish poet. It doesn’t even feel like an act of ventriloquism for that suggests an active medium with valences and a voice of its own, rather, Trzeciak merely seems to turn a switch and Rozewicz miraculously speaks Engl More...

I picked this up because it was on display at the library and the title SOBBING SUPERPOWER stuck my imagination. For the most part Rozewicz's poems are lovely because they are so direct. I find his work strongest when he combines very fluidly his direct experience with political situations. He wrote numerous poems about the confusion caused by witnessing the Holocaust:

I’m searching for a teacher and a master
let him give me back my sight hearing and speech
let him name objects and concepts again
le More...

Interesting to see a poet radically expand his scope throughout the 60-odd years course of his writing.
Not what i would call a fun read, but relentless and steadfast and wounded. I appreciate his stance of general refusal: of easy answers, of relaxation, of artistry. This seems to be someone for whom art is less a way in to 'finding out what [he's] thinking' and more an inescapable necessity to get thru the day. And, as far as i am able to tell, the translation is outstanding, since it seems to More...

he has some really remarkable poems, but a lot of them didn't strike me as being particularly interesting. the other collection of his verse that i read was enough tbh.