Selected poems from the series “Conversations With The Ashes” published in Pisarze.pl [Writers].
Please scroll down the page in Pisarze.pl, to read both the original English language poems and/or their Polish translations.
Selected poems from the series “Conversations With The Ashes” published in Pisarze.pl [Writers].
Please scroll down the page in Pisarze.pl, to read both the original English language poems and/or their Polish translations.
From Joanne Stokkink‘s review of The Wall & Beyond:
“If being inspired and made to think is part of the happiness that some say is the purpose of poetry, Joanna Kurowska’s latest poetry collection The Wall and Beyond meets that purpose and then some. Her poems entice you with simplicity and ease in reading and then stand you on your head.” (Time of Singing. Vol. 41. Fall 2014, p. 20)
To read the entire review, click HERE
Copied with permission from Joanne Stokkink and Time of Singing
A phenomenal review of The Wall & Beyond, by Wendy Vardaman, has just appeared in Religion And The Arts (# 18.1-2).
Rendition
Can I translate the waves of Lake Michigan
into the Śniardwy’s squall or Skanda’s ripples?
The deep carpets of grass in Evanston’s parks
into chamomiles, nettles, and weed thickets?
And can I transcribe the crimson cardinal
Into the charcoal “szpak” or olive “dzwoniec,”
or move the gray squirrels (when I dye them red)
from the town’s squares to the Mazurian forests?
So powerfully space and time interlace
—abandon one, you will distort the other.
Dogs don’t speak Polish here nor do the birds;
the black currant does not bloom—it can talk to no one.
* * *
a group of people
push their way
onto a crowded bus
a three-year-old boy
exclaims:
finally
we are riding together
the whole family!
_________________________________
© Joanna Kurowska
Poem first published in Strong Verse
Read more poems by Joanna Kurowska