Dariusz Sosnicki's poems open our eyes to the sublime just beneath the surface of the mundane: a train carrying children away from their parents for summer vacation turns into a ravenous monster; a meal at a Chinese restaurant inspires a surreal journey through the zodiac; a malfunctioning printer is a reminder of the ghosts that haunt us no matter where we find ourselves.
Among the perpetrators and victims,
buzzed or wasted to the bone,
gliding without their blinkers on
in the ruts of the national fate-they're not at home.
Dariusz Sosnicki is an award-winning poet, essayist, and editor in Poland.
Table of Contents:
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ONE 4
LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER 5
FROM THE GROUND FLOOR 6
GOING DOWN 7
VISIONS OF THE MIDWEST PRAIRIE 8
WYNTON MARSALIS AND THE BOSTON SYPHONY ORCHESTRA
UNDER THE DIRECTION OF SEIJI OZAWA ON THE FRENCH
MUSIC STATION “MEZZO” 10
MONSTER 12
CHINESE ZODIAK 13
A WORKER ON A SCAFFOLD, A MINOR RASTER OF THE DEBRIS
NETTING 14
THREE ROOKS 15
POEM AGAINST MONEY 16
A MOUSE IN A BUCKET 17
MARLEWO 18
RAIN. A RHETORICAL QUESTION 19
IN WINTER, THREE HOURS BEFORE DAWN 20
TWO 21
MR. P. CONFESSES: I’M NOT AN URBAN GUERILLA 22
MR. AND MRS. P. AND MOTOR VEHICLES 23
MR. AND MRS. P. AND THE SADNESS OF ANIMALS 24
ALPHABET OF MR. P.: THE ETHOS OF READING 25
ALPHABET OF MRS. P.: TABLE 26
ALPHABET OF MR. P.: SHOPPING BAG 27
ALPHABET OF MR. P.: SHOES or the Opinion of Mr. P. on the 2008 Olympics 28
ALPHABET OF MR. P.: AUTUMN COAT 29
MR. AND MRS. P. AND ANTI-WANDA 30
ALPHABET OF MRS. P.: POTTED PLANTS (in December) 31
MR. AND MRS. P. AND THE PRICE OF SUGAR 32
MR. AND MRS. P. FANTASIZE ABOUT MOVING or On the Advantage
and Disadvantage of History for Life 33
SUMMER OF MR. AND MRS. P. 34
THREE 35
THAW 36
THE HYDRANT ON LACHOWICKA STREET 37
BIRD SONG 38
WASPS 39
HOW DOES ONE GO DOWN THE STAIRS 40
MAUNDY THURSDAY 41
THE IKARUS 42
TONERSTAINS 43
OF THINGS AND PEOPLE 44
HOLY CROSS LAMENT 45
EARTHLY DELIGHTS 46
NOTES 48
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 49
[Polish poems not yet included]
About the Author :
Dariusz Sosnicki (born in 1969 in Kalisz) is a poet, essayist and editor. He graduated from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan with a degree in Philosophy. He was co-editor of the art-zine Juz Jest Jutro (19911994) and co-founder and co-editor of the influential Polish literary biweekly Nowy Nurt (19941996). In 1994 he published the collection of poems Marlewo, which received the best first book award from the magazine Czas Kultury. In 2001, he participated in International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Next year, his fourth collection of poems Symmetry was shortlisted for "Polityka" Passport and received the New Books Review Prize. Sosnicki's poems and literary essays have been published in many magazines and anthologies, in both Polish and in translation. From 2005-2013 he worked at W.A.B. Publishing House as editor of Polish contemporary fiction. He lives in Poznan.
Piotr Florczyk is a poet, essayist, and translator from his native Polish. He is editor and translator of Froth: Poems by Jaroslaw Mikolajewski (Calypso Editions, 2013), The Folding Star and Other Poems by Jacek Gutorow (BOA Editions, 2012), Building the Barricade and Other Poems of Anna Swir (Calypso Editions, 2011), and Been and Gone: Poems of Julian Kornhauser (Marick Press, 2009). He teaches at University of San Diego and at San Diego State University.
Boris Dralyuk holds a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures from UCLA. He is the translator of Leo Tolstoy's How Much Land Does a Man Need (Calypso Editions, 2010), A Slap in the Face: Four Russian Futurist Manifestos (Insert Blanc Press, 2013), and Anton Chekhov's Little Trilogy (forthcoming from Calypso Editions, 2014), and co-translator of Polina Barskova's The Zoo in Winter: Selected Poems (Melville House, 2011). He is also the co-editor, with Robert Chandler and Irina Mashinski, of the forthcoming Anthology of Russian Poetry from Pushkin to Brodsky (Penguin Classics, 2015). He received First Prize in the 2011 Compass Translation Award competition, and, with Irina Mashinski, First Prize in the 2012 Joseph Brodsky/Stephen Spender Translation Prize competition.
Review :
"The World Shared is a dream-catalogue of surrealist riffs and humble strangeness." --Biblioasis "This first American book from the prolific and celebrated Polish poet and critic not only survives translation; its urbane, articulate, unpredictable free verse positively flourishes in the American English that the facing-page edition provides ... the poetry introduced here has come to stay." --Publishers Weekly "[The World Shared] is destined to become an international classic ... Sosnicki is a fearless and tenacious intellectual whose poetry exhibits flashes of brilliance that illuminate our most obscure and often unacknowledged fears about contemporary life." --The Journal "Sosnicki has loads of talent, and this volume offers North American readers entry into his necessary poetry ... "Sosnicki reaches out to each of us, tries to wipe the anonymity off our faces, and to recover, if not rescue us, as an archeologist recovers a mud-smeared amulet from a deep stratum." --Entropy
