The World Shared

by Dariusz Sosnicki, Piotr Florczyk (Translator), Boris Dralyuk (Translator)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781938160349
Publisher:	BOA Editions, Ltd.
Publication date:	06/10/2014
Series:	Lannan Translations Series
Edition description:	Bilingual
Pages:	112
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Dariusz Sosnicki (born in 1969 in Kalisz) is a poet, essayist and editor. He graduated from the Adam Mickiewicz Universityin Poznań with a degree in Philosophy. He was co-editor of the art-zine Juz Jest Jutro (1991–1994) and co-founder and co-editor of the influential Polish literary biweekly Nowy Nurt (1994–1996). 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 Universityof 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 Poznań.

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 Universityof 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.

Table of Contents

Introduction 9

1

Latarnik 12

Lighthouse Keeper 13

Z parteru 14

From the Ground Moor 15

W dól 16

Going Down 17

Widzenia na prerii Midwestu 18

Visions of the Midwest Prairie 19

Wynton Marsalis i Bostonska Orkiestra Symfoniczna pod dyrekcja. Seijiego Ozawy we francuskiej stacji muzycznej Mezzo" 22

Wynton Marsalis and the Boston Symphony Orchestra Under the Direction of Seiji Ozawa on the French Music Station "Mezzo" 23

Potwór 26

Monster 27

Chinski zodiak 30

Chinese Zodiac 31

Robotnik na rusztowaniu, drobny raster siatki 32

A Worker on a Scaffold, a Minor Raster of the Debris Netting 33

Trzy gawrony 34

Three Rooks 35

Wiersz przeciw pieniadzom 36

Poem Against Money 37

Mysz w wiadrze 38

A Mouse in a Bucket 39

Marlewo 40

Marlewo 41

Deszcz. Pytanie retoryczne 42

Rain. A Rhetorical Question 43

Zima, na trzy godziny przed switem 44

In Winter, Three Hours Before Dawn 45

2

Pan P. wyznaje: Nie jestem miejskim partyzantem 48

Mr. P. Confesses: I'm Not an Urban Guerrilla 49

Panstwo P. i pojazdy mecbaniczne 50

Mr. and Mrs. P. and Motor Vehicles 51

Panstwo P. i smutek zwierzat 54

Mr. and Mrs. P and the Sadness of Animals 55

Alfabet pana P.: Etos czytelniezy 56

Alphabet of Mr. P.: The Ethos of Reading 57

Alfabet pani P.: Stól 58

Alphabet of Mrs. P.: Table 59

Alfabet pana P.: Torba na zakupy 60

Alphabet of Mr. P.: Shopping Bag 61

Alfabet pana P.: Buty

albo Glos pana P. w sprawie olimpiady 62

Alphabet of Mr. P.: Shoes or the Opinion of Mr. P. on the 2008 Olympics 63

Alfabet pana P.: Jesionka 66

Alphabet of Mr. P.: Autumn Coat 67

Panstwo P. i anty-Wanda 68

Mr. and Mrs. P. and Anti-Wanda 69

Alfabet pani P.: Rosliny doniczkowe (w grudniu) 70

Alphabet of Mrs. P.: Potted Plants (in December) 71

Panstwo P. i cena cukru 72

Mr. and Mrs. P. and the Price Of Sugar 73

Panstwo P. snuja fantazje na temat przeprowadzki albo O pozytkach i szkodliwosci historii dla zycia 74

Mr. and Mrs. P. Fantasize About Moving or On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life 75

Lato panstwa P. 76

Summer of Mr. and Mrs. P. 77

3

Odwilz 80

Thaw 81

Hydrant stoi pizy Lachowickiej 82

The Hydrant on Lachowicka Street 83

Ptasia piosenka 84

Bird Song 85

Osy 86

Wasps 87

Jak zejs po schodach 88

How Does One Go Down the Stairs 89

Wielki Czwartek 90

Maundy Thursday 91

Ikarus 92

The Ikarus 93

Tonerbrudzi 94

Tonerstains 95

O rzeczach i ludziach 96

Of Things and People 97

Lament swietokrzyski 98

Holy Cross Lament 99

Ziemskie przyjemnosci 100

Earthly Delights 101

Notes 105

Acknowledgments 107

About the Author 108

About the Translators 109

Editorial Reviews

05/19/2014
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. Sosnicki can be minatory, or mock-vatic, almost advising the impossible: “One is an owl./ One should be more so.// One should close one’s eyes, which have ceased to see,/ and open new ones.” But he can also excel as an observer, voicing the everyday absurd: to “A Mouse in a Bucket,” Sosnicki says “I can’t believe you fell in here by your own fault/ or that some bird basketball player has dropped you.” Zoo animals look “glad/ to pose for pictures and be fed junk”; items of furniture, late in the day, “reach out to us/ with an ergonomic handle.” A few poems depict the American plains or address American topics; others pursue the travails of Polishness, tiny and huge: “Why do Polish girls take off their shoes on the train?... We have paid dearly for our disastrous geopolitical situation.” Thoughtful American readers who have grown tired of hothouse surrealism should embrace Sosnicki’s humor, understated intelligence, and dry ironies: the poetry introduced here has come to stay. (June)

Publishers Weekly

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

From the Publisher