Andrzej Sosnowski

Collection of poetry.....I must admit that much of this poetry was over my head, which, for me, means that the poem did not evoke anything emotionally or intellectually other than some frustration. It was translated from the original Polish, and I still did not understand some of the vocabulary! However, the poems to which I did respond were absolutely beautiful! My favorite was one entitled, "Ocean". Its verses tossed and turned, crested the waves, and slid into the abyss.....very satisfying! Tough read!… (meer)

We are very lucky to get this opportunity to read Andrezej Sosnowski’s poetry in English. Lodgings in the first book-length collection of Sosnowski’s poetry to be translated into English from the Polish, and translator Benjamin Paloff has done a marvelous job capturing Sosnowski’s dream-like imagery and contrasting tones. This collection includes poems from nine of Sosnowski’s books, spanning more than twenty years of work (1987-2010).

I’m not an educated poetry critic but, rather, a longtime poetry appreciator. I know what I like, and Sosnowski’s poetry definitely qualifies. It’s challenging and often nonsensical on the first reading, but the lush imagery leaves me in a pleasant, rather than an annoying, fog of confusion. In each poem, I usually discover a line or two that really grabs my attention and encourages me to read the poem several times over so as to untangle its meaning. Meaning often shifts from line to line. These poems demand an open-minded and flexible reader.

To give you a sense of Sosnowski’s style (and Paloff’s translation), here are a couple of my favorite lines from two of the poems included in Lodgings.

From “Warsaw”:
Yesterday, after the paper, they were giving out a new hymn, actually
a two-for-one mazurka and dream cake in chocolate sauce
garnished with candied angelica, and today on the stairs and in the elevator
the smell of mint chewing gum so that once again like the speech
bubble in a comic strip it’s going to follow me all day.

From “Life in Korea”:
The intellect dozes a little,
the senses have their turn, and again I’m seized
by the lovely things of this world: apples, water, milk,
purest air. And once you get it,
that you haven’t earned these or any other
fifteen minutes, you can have a drink,
smash your world to pieces, and at long last
think it over.

This review also appears on my blog Literary License.… (meer)