Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Magical Polish American Poets

Polish Theatre them.  Arnold Szyfman in Warsaw

Designed as a continuation of last year's Poetry Salon devoted to the Beat Generation, the Salon "Magic Polish identity - poetry of Polish Americans" introduces the audience to a wider circle of poetry of Polish Americans.
Among the poets presented will be Michael Basinski, Phil Boiarski, Stuart Dybek, John Guzlowski, Leonard Kress, Linda Nemec Foster, Karen Kovacik, John Minczeski, Elisabeth Murawski, Mark Pawlak, Thad Rutkowski, Laura Ulewicz and Cecilia Woloch. 
The poems will  be read by Magdalena Cielecka and Jan Nowicki.
The event will take place on Nov. 17, noon.  

Here is a poem by one of the poets who will be presented at the Poetry Salon


Linda Nemec Foster

The Countries That Claim Me

I am from America and Poland.
I wonder how I came to have hazel eyes:
flecks of earth, sky, and sea in my gaze.
I hear the low pitch of the moon
as it swings above the roof.
I see crows, their blue-black emblem of regret:
I want to touch that regrret, to kiss it.

I pretend to be a cloud, a shadow,
a fragment of some distant past.
I feel lucky and American, Polish and cursed.
I touch the old and the new – mother, daughter.
I worry about really not knowing either.
I cry because my son will never dance
the mazurka, polonaise, oberek.
I am from America and Poland.

I understand English – nothing more.
I say it is not enough, not enough.
I dream in a foreign language thick
with the sound of dark trees.
I try to translate the words of each leaf.
I hope the wind will carry my response.
I am from America and Poland.

_________________________________
More information is available at the Teatr Polski's website: 

Friday, October 11, 2013

Whispered by Bozena Helena Mazur-Nowak



Since emigrating to Great Britain in 2004, Bozena Helena Mazur-Nowak's impassioned poems have appeared extensively online, and in the last few years she's gathered them together in a number of volumes.

Whispered is the most recent of these volumes of poems.

Her poems here are consistently lyrical and emotionally charged.  The reader looking for clearly written poems that express love and longing, sorrow and hope, will find them in this book.

A representative poem is "Someone Turned You into a Rock."


Someone Turned You into a Rock

You turned your back on me
Locked the door behind you
Threw away the key to your heart 
You have gone and left a scar 
Which does not want to heal

My heart bleeds and hurts
I feel half of me die
The other half lives like a ghost 

Wake up from your sleep my love
Calm my pain and suffering

Come back to me and let me live
Or kill completely my heart
Can not be like that anymore
I gave you my life and my heart

Someone turned you into a rock

_______________________


The book is available as a download from SCRIBD.  Just click here.