Airport Music by Mark Tardi

Mark Tardi's most recent collection of poems is called Airport Music, and it recently found itself on the Small Press Distribution's Best Seller list.

I asked Mark about the inspiration for the book and here's what he wrote back:

As for why I wrote the book, as a Polish-American Chicagoan who grew up about a mile away from Midway Airport and one block away from freight train tracks, the relentless pulse of movement quite literally hung over our heads. I began to consider how airports are a kind non-place, neither here nor there, and how this intersects with a sense of Polish identity. And this sense of being "between" also connects to Polishness, both historically and presently, I think. So much of Polish identity relates to the struggle for nationhood historically; and presently, so many Poles achieve by leaving Poland. Chopin, Gombrowicz, Miłosz, you can go down the line, but so many important Polish figures were outside of their homeland.

As an American living abroad, of course I feel this more acutely in a different direction. There are obvious ways that my Americanness is visible, but in other ways, it shifts within different contexts. It can be both a liberating feeling and a very disorienting one. So I hope those emotions bleed through the book somehow.

I'm also attracted to paradox. So an artist like Sean Scully impresses me for following through a motif his entire life -- to activate stripes -- while Bontecou goes the other route, intense torque and shifts in various directions. Roman Opalka might be a touchpoint here because of his obsessive fixation with numbers, counting, his life's work being to count his days, quite literally. The numbers are textured paintings, but also voiced, uttered; something palpable but also floating in the air. Makes me think of that line from Michael Palmer's "Zanzotto" sequence: "the hum of the possible to say", something like that. I suppose I think of this idea of "airport" as constituent parts: both "air" and "port," impalpable triangulations of space, positions in time and history enveloped in the endless parade of almosts. And there are no giveaway silences, which is a kind of music.

Here are some of the poems from Mark Tardi’s Airport Music:

Tone

            for Agata Pietrasik

Impossible, this swept curve, sleep torn.

                                                                        Almost unguessable fractions, one more rehearsal, impossible, purely so, curved in fog. Though not in any strict sense, a door opens and goes on opening, impossible, to negotiate the difference between a handshake and a poem.  We all know dying in Cleveland is

                                                                        redundant, yes, or maybe it’s the weather.  To just walk into a photograph, impossible, sure, but plausible enough. And I’m grateful.  Impossible to marry my mailbox, impossible the curses this early. An impossible affection for the same.

from Airport music

Let x equal the amount of broken glass strewn across the sidewalk;

Let y equal the most hurried, the last

this brute contingency

that any breathing falls, imperfect

half-boarded up

There’s no harm for anyone else

in your mathematics

thin negatives,

slant black

never quiet, only graspless

locked into the cut of a house

Let k equal a knot of people, expectant

sounding each other out

a drawn bath to deform water

a butcher’s broom

5 out of 4 people have trouble with fractions. 

The entireness of simple touch. All those

lost landscapes. 

Your dead body looks like rain;

Mine, rotted planks for pavement, standing

water, vinegar, another flu out of season

Don’t ask how we went, by what sudden leap

or what unforeseen modulation. This zero with

so many ciphers.

It was impossible to watch:

To undress and dress again.

The chest a harpsichord.

That the withheld is the only eloquence left.

Flags and bunting everywhere.

A built-in lefthandedness.

Woven wind.

That the dead are protected. 

Another infinity, a hotel.

It was an injury to the idea.

A saucepan to plant some flowers in.

Interior

            after Lee Bontecou

            So why this body again,           less inglorious,

absorbed

in interminable games of patience.  Why

the doorbell once more, the

anticipatory suspicion, why confess, why

the hammer or lorry or spaceship?

            Why not mine or someone else’s yellow expanding?

Now you lag, tug, looking back, inescapable perhaps,

no longer a mailbox to speak of.

            For the day, or a certain part of it, the rain slides.

            Prior architecture, the perfect colander:

Why not a candle, carpenter’s bench, little hats and all manner of birds?

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Mark Tardi's Airport Music is available at Amazon.  Click here.

To read more about Mark Tardi and see some more of his poems, click here: Writing the Polish Diaspora.

Tomasz Różycki’s Colonies Translated by Mira Rosenthal

One of the best received recent translations of Polish poetry is Mira Rosenthal's translation of Tomasz Różycki’s Colonies (Zephyr Press, 2013), a collection of 77 sonnets deepening our collective memory of what happened in Central Europe in the 20th century

Susan Stewart said that it's "One of the most remarkable sonnet sequences of our time: the work of a wandering, restless, and moral mind, here rendered with clarity and vividness by the translations of Mira Rosenthal.”

The reviewer at The California Journal of Poetics wrote, "Tomasz Różycki stands at the crossroads of historicism and new aesthetics. It is important that poets like Różycki are translated into English ... In this case, Różycki, through Rosenthal’s clean and stunning translations, succeeds at giving an American audience a new perspective in a constantly changing world.”

I asked Mira to tell me about how she first came to translate Różycki.  Here's what she was kind enough to write back:

            In 2004, Tomasz Różycki won the Kościelski Prize for his mock epic poem Twelve Stations. I happened to be living in Kraków on a Fulbright fellowship at the time, working on what would become my first book of poems and slowly unpacking (with my fledgling Polish) the work of poets I had never run across in any of the anthologies available in English translation. The awards ceremony for the Kościelski Prize was taking place just minutes from my apartment, so I went. I had never heard of Różycki before. But many of the Polish poets who were quite familiar to me—Zbigniew Herbert, Adam Zagajewski—had won the prize early on in their careers. It was a prestigious marker of things to come.

            The reading that Różycki gave at the ceremony was enthralling. His book-length poem was deadly serious and exceedingly playful at the same time, a personal response to the classic epic poem Pan Tadeusz. After that night, I began reading through all of Różycki’s work, including four earlier collections of short lyric poetry. What I found was a very worthy successor to an amazing literary tradition. Unlike many of his contemporaries, who sought to put aside the burdens of history and moralism in the work of their immediate poetic forerunners, Różycki seemed to embrace his poetic lineage. His lyricism and formal play were enthralling and expansive.   His poetry built on the work of those poets who had brought me to Poland in the first place.  It gave me a window into the contemporary extension of historical and cultural themes, and compelled me to try my hand at translation.  

Here are two of the Różycki poems translated by Ms. Rosenthal.

Military Exercises

Imagine for a moment that I live

right here, was born here, that my parents always

have had a shop here, and on Boulevard

du Temple there’s a bistro with a nice

young waitress—I’ll be there. Imagine that

there’s no such thing as Eastern Europe, no

cellars for hiding neighbors, no transports,

no round-ups, never any dreams of going

from house to house—for a moment suppose

it looks like this: a cat stretches its neck

in sunlight on a porch, a secret game

of chess unfolds between the waitress and

that guy. He tracks her moves, she brings him coffee,

as if by chance her hip jostles the board.

Service Office

I played the part of man, and more or less

it came to me quite well. I used deceptions,

makeup, mascara, base, a huge number

of words, for nearly everything is possible

with words, and everything was going well,

life from a suitcase, life on credit, nerves

before a trip, a house, a name and surname,

words, a whole host. I played the part of man,

and I was expert at it. Words like friendship,

father, woman, love, the word betrayal,

the word forgive. I could have forgotten myself,

I could have gotten lost in making words

my body, hands, and heart, little was missing.

Only the dog could tell. He bristled in his sleep.

___________________________________

Colonies is available from Amazon.  Click here to go there.

Tomasz Różycki (born 1970) is a Polish poet and translator. He studied Romance Languages at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, and taught French at the Foreign Languages Teaching College in Opole. In addition to his teaching, he translated and published Stéphane Mallarmé's "Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard" in 2005, and continues to translate from French for publication.  He has published six books of poetry: Vaterland (1997), Anima (1999), Chata uimaita (Country Cottage, 2001), Świat i Antyświat (World and Antiworld, 2003), the book-length poem Dwanaście stacji (Twelve Stations, 2004), Kolonie (Colonies, 2006) and The Forgotten Keys (2007). His work has appeared in leading literary journals such as Czas Kultury, Odra, Studium and Pen America.  He lives in his hometown, Opole, with his wife and two children.

Mira Rosenthal is the author of The Local World, which won the 2010 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, as well as two volumes of poetry translations. Among her awards are fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the PEN American Center, the MacDowell Colony, and the Fulbright Commission. Her poems and translations have been published in many literary journals and anthologies, including Ploughshares, APR, Harvard Review, and A Public Space. You can listen to her read her work on Slate and The CortlandReview.  Her website is at http://mirarosenthal.com/

Anteroom Poetry by Adam Lizakowski and Neal Warren

Review by Vincent Francone 

“The poet should be a DOG who pokes his nose in the garbage can smells the roses in the emperor’s garden barks and howls at the moon even if it ignores him.”  - Adam Lizakowski.

So begins Anteroom Poetry, a chapbook of poems split between Neal M. Warren and Adam Lizakowski.  As someone who has tried to write poems, and has at times renounced the writing and reading of them, I find these opening words to be nothing short of inspiring.  The poet’s job is not to seek glory but to write without it, in spite of all obstacles, to be the dog seeking and howling, with or without acknowledgment. 

The poets present different styles on different themes; Warren’s poems speak of war, the inhumanity of it and the struggle of those who fight, both on the battlefield and after returning home.  Lizakowski’s work bounces from culture clashing with American poets to the erotic ruminations and many points in between.  The collection is tight enough to contain nothing but stunners and offers a glimpse into a friendship and collaboration through poetry. 

____________________________________

(Vincent lives in Chicago and has been published in Spectrum, Rhino, The Oklahoma Review, the Jet Fuel Review, and other journals.  He writes reviews for Three Percent and won the 2009 Illinois Emerging Writer award for his long poem, "Chicago.")

Anteroom Poetry by Neal M. Warren and Adam Lizakowski was published by Outskirts Press, 2013.  It is available at Amazon.  Click here.

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Two of Adam Lizakowski's poems from Anteroom Poetry

American Poets

American poets known to me

are reminiscent of a prehistoric bird

that still retains talons and scales

is too heavy to fly far

or sit on a branch

but stubbornly looks up

and stares at the stars

American poets know to me

like to listen music from the sixties and seventies

bob dylan, beatles, stones, Joplin,

hendrix, led zeppelin,

smoke grass, drink beer

write poems about Vietnam

during the 66-68 period

complain about politicians

and are displeased with new wave music

American poets know to me

cannot tell me why

there is no poetry –none

in newsweek, time, people, new york tiems,

washington post, san franscisco examiner,

penthose, usa today, hustler

American poets known to me

still read verses of 19^th  century French poets

and dostoevesky and albert camus

whitman, poe, ginsberg

letters to a young poet by rilke

blake, eliot…

American poets known to me

cannot tell me why

none of their pictures

appear on first pages, any page

of the above-named newspapers

but there are pictures

of the politicians, presidents, pope

 naked women, ports stars, spies, astronauts

rock and movie stars, communists, murderers

pepsi cola and hamburgers.

American poets known to me

live in San Francisco

a city where there’s 4.5 poets per square yard,

who paint their faces in bright colors

wear leather, carry mace

and go hunting:

the poetry  that they seek is a wild animal

neither fed or touch

which has been living in America

since the end of the third ice-age.

The Cherry Bandits

          I

The copper moon

hung in the ink-black sky

sky above the cherry-tree peaks

peaks above the blond heads

of three twelve-year-old boys

from the same street-

connoisseurs of amazing cherries.

(In the darkness by moonlight

cherries are not cherries

but precious stones from royal crowns-

exotic, expensive jewels stolen

by pirates-stashed

in the dark caves of mysterious islands.)

Hidden amid branches, devouring the cherries

each races to cram his mouth with more.

They-their heart-leaves shook by the cherry-trees-

eagerly grab what’s not theirs

boldly drawing the soft branches nearer

dancing like birds among the leaves, singing as they munch

passionate in the moment.

They spit out the cherry-pits, look down

and a vision lighter than a May-bug’s wings rises

above the tips of grass-

in the distance chimneys deeply inhale and exhale

for the last time

dozing after a moment, stretching out in exhaustion,

sleepy windows blinking their shuttered eyelids . . .

it is quiet-the crickets sing in chorus

and night, the bell-smith, slowly, precisely

casts the delicate bells of dew

on the lead tenor.

Between the three

and the cherry-tree and the night

love is born-between the heart and cherries

between leaves and moonlight-

there runs a feeling so evasive

that no one can put a finger on it,

let alone express it.

Boys beautiful and innocent, joined by sweet cherries.

          II

Stuffing the labyrinth of their stomachs

they put their guard, Vigilance, to sleep.

Their treasures hidden under their shirts

they had little chance for escape.

The cherry-orchard owner, Mr Michalski, promised

that if they ate the stolen cherries on the spot

he’d forget the whole thing.

But he didn’t keep his word,

led them back to their parents

who boxed the boys’ ears as a lesson.

          III

Twelve years later the three cherry bandits

stopped at the camp gates in Traiskirchen, Austria.

They hadn’t eaten in two days,

slept in three nights, bathed in four days-

it was November, arch-foe of dreamers, of carefree men.

          IV

If you don’t find happiness in your own country

it won’t be found elsewhere.

Fresh are the mornings for those rising at dawn

to milk the cows, feed the animals,

fasten the grapevines.

But not to those slaving for their naps

at the gates of the camp in Traiskirchen.

Trains, roaring like waterfalls, roll

into the Viennese station-the river of people rushes

to the ocean of freedom.

The port of freedom is the administration building-

painfully its grim exterior pricks

the tired eyes of the refugees.

The regimental barracks of Joseph the Friar

one-time school for the Nazi’s bravest cadets

and current garrison of the brave Red Army

now-ironically-give hope of a better life

not happier, just better-

for these Eastern Europeans, traitors to their countries.

          V

Million-copy print-runs, poetic  honors,

front-page newspaper photos,

the most beautiful women, fame, money

dreams of distant and sunny California.

Reality is otherwise,

the eyes open wider

reluctant-everyone was reluctant

against their ears hummed the ocean waves

which they’d demanded with so much greed,

more patient now they wait in kilometer-long lines

in their hands tin receptacles for dinner-

answer the more and less

idiotic questions of the officers,

photos, fingerprints,

signatures, endless signatures,

decisions weighed,

numerous decisions, the selection of countries, of cities,

of sponsoring organizations,

brief friendships, sometimes but a moment,

tears, letters sent, glances back-

there’s Poland like a dog

jumping at you, tugging its chain,

baring its teeth,

Jaruzelski’s martial law in a fury-

what’ll happen to the prisoners

will they shoot them-

not my family I hope-

fatigue, distraction, apathy, depression,

lines to the stores, to the beds, the toilets,

interrogations everywhere,

          hundreds, thousands of people.

Communism

on their lips, in their skulls, dreams

communism

source of the people’s tragedy

communism

and its prophets damned to their cores

communism

stretched, coaxed, paired, spit upon

communism

mud’s synonym, soiling even the best men-

though the few gored most by communism’s

devil-horns

(or those with the most imagination)

were the first to fly away on angel’s wings.

          VI

Squabbles with the Albanians,

Hungarians cursing the Romanians,

the Czechs and Slovaks,

the Yugoslavians dominating everyone,

knife-fights, drunken brawls,

drawn-out disturbing howls.

Sex is at a high price-

though there’s few women,

Polish hookers the cheapest

but unwilling with the Polish men;

a golden age for homosexuals;

a floor up there’s a brothel run

like the best American supermarkets.

Thank God you survived another day,

pray for a quiet night-

many are sleeping in bunk beds,

in the hallways,

keep your papers under the pillows,

sleep with your eyes open.

The blankets a purgatorial curtain-

border between

being a beggar-slave of the commune

or humble servant of capitalism.

Of the thousands of refugees only a few will return.

Then day arrives, the smartest men, the earliest risers

(there might be a bread-shortage at breakfast)

dash to the toilets,

dash to the bulletin-boards and scan the lists-

no, not today,

though their wings are growing

rustling in their dreams:

Angles-creatures so delicate

God gave them wings.

          VII

The good-hearted people published a book

in Polish and English,

A Handbook for Polish refugees, prepared and presented

by the International Catholic Migration,

Geneva, Switzerland.

The Americans bathe daily

keep their money in banks,

there’s a hundred pennies in each dollar,

packages are mailed at the post office

letters go in the boxes painted blue,

in an emergency dial 911,

in the USA

the British measurement system is standard,

in a few days you’ll understand:

cars are the most popular form of transportation,

fruit is cheapest in season,

meat comes in packages

kept in the freezers of the big stores. . . .

America is a country of immigrants

and immigrants are America’s wealth.

____________________________________

Adam Lizakowski writes the blog Polish Arts and Poetry Asoociation of Chicago.  http://polishartsandpoetryassociation.blogspot.com/

Jarosław Mikołajewski’s Froth: Poems

Piotr Florczyk continues his excellent work bringing Polish poets to an American audience.  His most recent work is a translation of a group of Jarosław Mikołajewski’s best poems.  The collection is called  Froth: Poems (Calypso Editions, 2013), and these poems mix what one critic has called “family theater” with a surrealistic sensitivity that creates a kind of domestic magic that draws you in and makes you want to keep reading and seeing the world through  Mikołajewski’s always engaging and often funny lens.

Mikołajewski, a short story writer, poet and translator, has received tremendous praise.  Ilya Kaminsky calls his poems "contemporary European poetry at its best," and Adam Zagajewski writes, "Mikołajewski's poems are kicking, running, appealing to us, readers. His poems live."

Here are three of the poems from this collection, first in Polish and then in Piotr Florczyk's English.

Kręgosłup mojej żony

W porze oczekiwania

kręgosłup mojej żony jest gałęzią

pękającą od nadmiaru jabłek

pokorną aż do ziemi

z braku odporności

W noce czuwania

jej kręgosłup jest szalikiem

zaciśniętym na wychudłej szyi

W noce miłości zwierzęcej

Jest suwakiem walizki

która nie chce się dopiąć nawet pod kolanem

W noce miłości ludzkiej

jest stalową liną

szeleszczącą na wietrze pod najwyższym napięciem

Na południowym spacerze

kręgosłup mojej żony jest chorągiewką

przewodnika pielgrzymów w przeludnionym kościele

Na wieczór po dniu marszu

jest grupką wylęknionych dzieci

które zepsuły przedszkolne pianino

jest samą klawiaturą

zepsutego pianina

Pod wieczornym prysznicem

jej kręgosłup jest żmiją

w czujnym lenistwie na rozgrzanej drodze

Pod północną kołdrą

kręgosłup mojej żony jest jak drzazga płonąca w piecu

z którego rano wyjmę ciepły chleb

My wife's spine

And when my wife’s pregnant

her spine is a bough

breaking under the weight of apples

humble all the way down to earth

from lack of resistance

On nights of keeping watch

her spine is a scarf

tightened around a slender neck

On nights of animal love

it is the zipper in a suitcase

that won’t close, even under a knee

On nights of human love

it is the steel rope

rustling in the wind, at the highest voltage

On the noon walk

my wife’s spine is the flag

carried by the pilgrims’ guide in a crowded church

In the evening, after a day-long march,

her spine is a bunch of frightened kids

who broke the kindergarten’s piano

it is the keyboard

of the broken piano

When she takes a shower

her spine is a viper

lazing watchfully on a sizzling road

Under the midnight comforter

my wife’s spine is like a wood chip burning in the oven

from which I’ll pull out warm bread at dawn

Między ziemią a nie

ziemia głośno wyje

bo wszedłem na piętro

zejdź bo jestem głodna

skamle drapiąc drzwi

jej łakomy oddech

owiewa mi pięty

żona prosi żebym

uspokoił ją

zatrzaskuję okna

ziemia wyje głośniej

wychodzę na balkon

ona zgina łeb

rzucam jej owoce

woła nakarm sobą

i święcie przyrzeka

to ostatni głód

żeby mi pokazać

jak jest wychudzona

tarza się na grzbiecie

w kurzu swojej krwi

widzę góry żeber

hałdy suchej skóry

waruj wołam z góry

ona woła zejdź

zejdź a będę czuwać

zejdź a będę mruczeć

zejdź a będę ciepła

i miękka jak puch

nie schodź proszą dzieci

kiedy wkładam buty

ziemia warczy

żona

prosi coś z nią zrób

Between earth and not

the earth howls loudly

because I’ve gone upstairs

“come down, I’m hungry”

she yelps, scratching the door

her greedy breath

is fanning my heels

my wife asks me

to calm the earth down

I shut the windows

the earth howls even louder

I walk out onto the balcony

she lowers her gaze

I throw her fruit

she yells “feed me with yourself”

and swears to god

“this is my last hunger”

to show me

how emaciated she is

she rolls around on her back

in the dust of her blood

I see mountains of ribs

heaps of dry skin

“stay put” I call from upstairs

“come down” she says

“come down, I’ll be vigilant”

“come down, I’ll hum for you”

“come down, I’ll be warm

and soft like feathers”

“don’t do it,” the children plead

as I put on my shoes

the earth’s growling

my wife

pleads “do something about her”

unia europejska

za mało biorę do siebie

że wyszedłem w deszcz

miałem wrócić

ale wyszło słońce

pojechałem na cmentarz nieznany

położyłem rękę na grobie

powiedział wstań trupie

wstałem

poszedłem

za mało biorę do siebie

zmiany pogody

przejaśnienia

chciałem pójść w lewo

a siedzę na brudnie z ręką w grobie taty

mój łokieć tęcza nad europą

european union

I don’t take enough personally

that I went out in the rain

had to go back

but the sun came out

I went to visit an unknown cemetery

I put my hand on his grave

he said rise you corpse

I got up

I went

I don’t take enough personally

changes in the weather

clearings-up

I wanted to go to the left

but I’m sitting in the rough with my hand on my father’s

grave

my elbow a rainbow over europe

_______________________

More information about Froth: Poems and other books by Calypso Editions is available by clicking here. 

Writing the Polish Diaspora has also posted on Poitr Florczyk's translations of Anna Swir's Building the Barricades and other Poems and Julian Kornhauser's Been and Gone.  Clicking on these titles will take you to the articles.