Without End: New and Selected Poems

Rating:
Summary: Superb Poetry
Review: This is a marvelous collection of poetry. It earns my highest recommendation. Zagajewski is one of the more interesting poets on the scene today.

This collection opens with "To See": "I had to see, and not to just know, to see clearly the sight and fires of a single world...my brethren in the shallow sand; the earth still turns above you...."

Other lovely poems are: "Dead Sparrow," "Speak Softly," "December," "Death of a Pianist," "Twenty Five Years," "The World's Prose," "Treatise on Emptiness," Try to Praise a Mutilated World," and "The Creation of the World."

Z's verse is economic and spare. His word craft creates deep images that are world-conscious, and they offer us a phenomenal awareness of ourselves. A good poet begins in metaphysical wonderment, and that is fulfilled here.

It seems that Z. looks past our blinking lids and bloodshot eyes to witness the barren cavity in which the human soul resides. And when that examination is found wanting in the discovery of spiritual emptiness, we look to the world and see ragged refugees on detoured paths to nowhere.

I also recommend: R. Hass, B. Collins, Z. Herbert, C. Milosz, R. Jeffers, S. Heaney, A. Rich, and W. Szymborska.

Rating:
Summary: Superb Poetry
Review: This is a marvelous collection of poetry. It earns my highest recommendation. Zagajewski is one of the more interesting poets on the scene today.

This collection opens with "To See": "I had to see, and not to just know, to see clearly the sight and fires of a single world...my brethren in the shallow sand; the earth still turns above you...."

Other lovely poems are: "Dead Sparrow," "Speak Softly," "December," "Death of a Pianist," "Twenty Five Years," "The World's Prose," "Treatise on Emptiness," Try to Praise a Mutilated World," and "The Creation of the World."

Z's verse is economic and spare. His word craft creates deep images that are world-conscious, and they offer us a phenomenal awareness of ourselves. A good poet begins in metaphysical wonderment, and that is fulfilled here.

It seems that Z. looks past our blinking lids and bloodshot eyes to witness the barren cavity in which the human soul resides. And when that examination is found wanting in the discovery of spiritual emptiness, we look to the world and see ragged refugees on detoured paths to nowhere.

I also recommend: R. Hass, B. Collins, Z. Herbert, C. Milosz, R. Jeffers, S. Heaney, A. Rich, and W. Szymborska.