Adam Zagajewski*

Adam Zagajewski (1945―2021) is one of Poland’s most celebrated poets. He was born in Lvov, Poland, but in the wake of WWII his family was forced to move west as territories shifted and Lvov became part of the Ukraine. His early writing was protest poetry, which led to his works being banned by Poland’s communist leaders in 1975. Later his focus transitioned to “night, dreams, history and time, infinity and eternity, silence and death.” He died on March 21st in Krakow, Poland.

Although he identified himself as a Catholic ― “a failed Catholic” ― he was not at home in the Catholic Church in Poland, which he called a disaster, where the majority of bishops are not even Christian, and where sermons bring political messages. In an interview with Catholic Herald last year he said:
----------But if you ask me what use can my readers make out of the
----------religious accent of my poems, well, it is not my business
----------to comment on this. If you are a serious poet you embark
----------on a search and you never know what you find at the end.
----------The idea of the search is for me the capital element in my
----------work. It is very hard to define oneself if the substance of
----------what you do is the quest, because it goes towards something
----------that you can’t define, something that does not have a strong
----------shape. Search is in searching, not in strong definitions.

The following poem is from Unseen Hand (2014, Farrar, Straus and Giroux) translated by Clare Cavanagh.

First Communion

Gliwice, Piramowicz Street

Dark gray houses and triangular bay windows,
near a little park with German statues
(pseudo-baroque from the thirties).
Mrs. Kolmer took my picture there
right after my First Communion
against the backdrop of a freshly laundered sheet:
I'm that chubby child. Earnest,
upright, candle in hand.
I'm a beginning Catholic,
who struggles to tell good from evil,
but doesn't know what divides them,
especially at dawn and dusk, when
for a long moment the light wavers.
The poplar leaves in the garden are black,
the light is black, the homes are black,
the air's transparent, only the sheet is white.
Color photos will come later
to mute the contrasts and perhaps permit
an ordinary life, splendid holidays,
even a second communion.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Adam Zagajewski: first post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection is Ampersand (2018, Cascade). His books are available through Amazon, and Wipf & Stock, including the anthologies The Turning Aside, and Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse.

Adam Zagajewski

Adam Zagajewski is a Polish poet, essayist and translator. He divides his time between Krakow and Chicago, where he teaches at the University of Chicago. His awards include the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award.

His poem "Try to Praise the Mutilated World" appeared on the back cover of The New Yorker shortly after the September 11th attacks, and received a lot of attention. His books include Without End: New and Selected Poems (FSG, 2003) and most-recently, Unseen Hand (FSG, 2011).

In acknowledgement of Czeslaw Milosz's question of the Pope, "[H]ow in the 20th century can one write religious poetry differently?” Zagajewski has said, “I think poets have to be able to find fresh metaphors for old metaphysical objects and longings. I’m a Christian, a sometimes doubting one (but this is almost a definition of a Christian: to doubt also). In my writing I have to be radically different from a priest. My language must have the sheen of a certain discovery.”

The following poem is from Without End.

Presence

I was born in a city of wild cherries
and hard-seeded sunflowers (common wisdom
had it halfway from the West
to the East). Globes stained by verdigris
kept careless vigil.

Might only the absence of presence be perfect?
Presence, after all, infected with the original
sin of existence, is excessive, savage,
Oriental, superb, while beauty, like a fruit knife,
snips its bit of plenitude off.
Life accumulates through generations
as in a pond; it does not vanish
with its moment but turns
airy and dry. I think
of a half-conscious prayer, the chapped lips
of a boy at his first confession,
the wooden step creaking
under his knees.
At night, autumn arrives
for the harvest, yellow, ripe for flame.
There are, I know, not one
but at least four realities,
intersecting
like the Gospels.
I know I'm alone, but linked
firmly to you, painfully, gladly.
I know only the mysteries are immortal.

Thanks to Burl Horniachek for suggesting this, and many other poets.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Adam Zagajewski: second post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection, Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis, is available from Wipf & Stock as is his earlier award-winning collection, Poiema.