Piotr Gwiazda

(Polish) Poetry after Różewicz

Marit MacArthur
Kacper Bartczak
Tadeusz Różewicz.

I proselytize for Tadeusz Różewicz (1921–2014) and his poetic legacy as a new convert, not with unique insight into his importance or his poetics. That I leave to the eleven Polish poets sampled here (and several translators), who can testify better than I can.

November 24, 2015

Grzegorz Wróblewski and Różewicz

Piotr Gwiazda

In the interview published last year in this magazine, Polish poet, writer, and dramatist Grzegorz Wróblewski refers to Różewicz as a “great poet” and “genuine innovator.” It would be accurate to say that much of his own poetry, which he has been writing since the early 1980s, builds on Różewicz’s example. In many of his poems Wróblewski adopts an austere and straightforward style.

November 24, 2015

Five Poems by Grzegorz Wróblewski (b. 1962)

Grzegorz Wróblewski
Piotr Gwiazda

Decline

YOU LIVE WITHOUT GOD FOR THERE IS NO GOD

THEY TOOK GOD FROM US GOD’S BLOOD IS FLOWING

YOU DON’T BELIEVE IN GOD BECAUSE OF GOD

FOR THERE IS NO GOD HAS ANYONE SEEN GOD?

PRAY TO OUR GOD THE TERRIBLE GOD

THEY MURDERED OUR GOD YOU DON’T BELIEVE IN GOD

BRING BACK OUR GOD! WE WANT OUR GOD!

November 24, 2015

'The passenger syndrome'

An interview with Grzegorz Wróblewski

Grzegorz Wróblewski
Piotr Gwiazda

Note: In early April 2014, Polish writer and painter Grzegorz Wróblewski gave readings from his book Kopenhaga (trans. Piotr Gwiazda, Zephyr Press, 2013) at Columbia University, Cambridge Public Library, Rhode Island School of Design, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

August 28, 2014

Standstill moments

A review of Piotr Gwiazda's 'Messages'

Robert Manaster

In his first book, Gargarin Street (2005), Piotr Gwiazda, after “meandering slowly from nowhere to nowhere”[1] in a self-deprecating manner, after revealing his motto “Give Chance a chance” (36), and after postulating,

What if the script of human life is full of typos,

missteps, mishaps, false starts, false alarms,
wrong turns, dead ends, distractions, digressions —[2]

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