Stacy Szymaszek

                                                                                                                                                                Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Stacy Szymaszek is the author of several books of poetry (Litmus Press). She is currently the artistic director of the Poetry Project at St. Marks Church in New York.

The following is an  excerpt from her 2005 book of poems Emptied of All Ships


from "shift at oars"


water
relives
reservoir

boat
bottom
draft
displaced



º



lineal
thought
backward
body

no one
knows
the brains
I am now

_____

tree
an oar
origin

joints ruptured
soak in
deep ink


º

wallpaper
remnant
flower
float

chandelier

brief case
hundred words
logged

erode
my
Arabic

_____

congestion
of resin

person



forecasts
final position

restless sleep



º



width of
back
belted

sodium
poultice

exhausts
courtship

_____

agora

drain
a home
of you

wind
lashes
fronds

cellophane



º



where a
mammal
bled

activity
not yet
diffused

blackened
patch
of water

_____

weight
of oyster
in gloved
hand he
shucks

dented
pewter



º



assonance
her aspect

relocated

wind
shatters
plexi

phenomena
forgone
for me





shift
at oars

new
muscle
grown
bone

never
held
you



º



case
of dried
apricot

gorge

I am
summoned



  ___________________________


To read more about Ms. Szymaszek click here.

Call for Translators

Poet/Translator Leonard Kress is putting together an anthology of Polish poetry in translation.  Here's the call he put out for translators and translations:

Translators! I would like to put together an anthology of Polish poetry (from the Middle Ages through contemporary poetry) with an emphasis on the poetic/literary value in English (no dual text). I'm thinking of work like W. H. Auden's translation of Mickiewicz's "Romanticism" or the Seamus Heaney/Baranczak versions of Kochanowski's "Treny." Before I attempt to shop this idea around, I'm curious if any of you have ideas or work you might like to see included. (I'm spurred on by the new GREEK POETS and the FSG ANTHOLOGY OF ITALIAN POETRY, though perhaps not as comprehensive. As far as I can tell there's not that much out there besides the Milosz Anthology of Modern Polish Poetry and the old Manfred Kridl Anthology of Polish Lit, etc. And though I'm surely interested in modern and contemporary, I'd also like to include lots from earlier stages. If interested, let me know and give me an idea of what poets you've translated. Please use this email address: leonard_kress@owens.edu.

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The picture above is of Adam Mickiewicz.  Leonard Kress's translation of his Pan Tadeusz is available as PDF.  Click here.