Astonishments: Selected Poems of Anna Kamienska - Softcover

Kamienska, Anna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1557255997 ISBN 13: 9781557255990

Publisher: Paraclete Press, 2008

Synopsis

Rare book

About this title

About the Author:

Anna Kamienska (1920-1986) was a major Polish writer and a recognized peer of the Nobel Prize winners Wislawa Szymborska and Czeslaz Milosz. She left a rich legacy of twenty books of poetry, two volumes of Notebooks (a short-hand record of her readings and self-questioning), two volumes of commentaries on the Bible, and other writings and translations.

Grazyna Drabik is a translator of Polish poetry into English and Portuguese, with translations published in literary journals and anthologies in the U.S. and Brazil. She teaches literature at City College-CUNY.

David Curzon is the author of books of poetry and midrash, and the editor of two anthologies. His work is represented in two Oxford anthologies and in World Poetry. He is currently a contributing editor of The Forward and The Jerusalem Review.

 

Review:

“Kamienska, a major Polish writer, and equal to Nobel Prize winners Wislawa Szymborska and Czeslaw Milosz, grew up in the horrors of Nazi occupation and Communism. Her poetry is straightforward, full of empathy and self-discovery. It describes ordinary things - harvest time, childhood, grammer, and laundry on the balcony line. The death of her husband left her depressed and she sought the bible and other religious thinkers of the twentieth century. One line illustrates her thought processes and deep feelings over the loss of her husband. ‘I still cannot believe in his death. Someone who loved so much, couldn't die. So is he alive?’ But it also led to a religious experience. The last part of the book contains extracts from her notebooks from 1965 to 1979. Her last poem was written three days before her death - writing of God and death.” —Polish American Journal

About this edition

• Publisher: Paraclete Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1557255997
• ISBN 13: 9781557255990
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144
• Editor: Drabik Grazyna