{"id":395576,"date":"2018-05-01T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-01T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2018\/05\/01\/magnetic-point-by-ryszard-krynicki-why-this-book-should-win\/"},"modified":"2018-05-02T19:22:37","modified_gmt":"2018-05-02T19:22:37","slug":"magnetic-point-by-ryszard-krynicki-why-this-book-should-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2018\/05\/01\/magnetic-point-by-ryszard-krynicki-why-this-book-should-win\/","title":{"rendered":"“Magnetic Point” by Ryszard Krynicki [Why This Book Should Win]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s entry from the BTBA<\/span> poetry longlist is from writer and translator Tess Lewis, who also has a title longlisted on the fiction side of things.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Magnetic Point<\/em><\/a> by Ryszard Krynicki, translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh (Poland, New Directions)<\/b><\/p>\n

To write so that a hungry man
\nmight think it\u2019s bread?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

bq., First feed the hungry man,
\nThen write so that his hunger
\nwon\u2019t go in vain.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cHow to Write?,\u201d Ryszard Krynicki<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Auden\u2019s line that \u201cpoetry makes nothing happen\u201d is not the programmatic cudgel it is often taken to be. Despite his loss of faith in poetry as an agent of concrete political change, Auden never doubted its survival or its ability to effect internal, intangible change. Ryszard Krynicki, a poet of extreme and elegant concision and occasional translator of Auden\u2019s poetry, is a master of nuanced irony and skilled in undercutting definitive pronouncements with skepticism. In his terse poem, \u201cAt Least,\u201d his final reservation places poetry in an ambivalently subservient position to history.<\/p>\n

A misprint, a lapsus linguae
\nmay change the course of history
\n\u2014or at least of poetry.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And perhaps through poetry, in turn, the course of history?<\/p>\n

The poems collected in Magnetic Point and impressively translated by Clare Cavanagh\u2014some together with Stanislaw Bara\u0144czak\u2014are especially tonic given the erosion of language and discourse in our tub-thumping age. The poem \u201cTruth?\u201d cajoles and goads the reader into examining his or her own assumptions and the self-evidence with which claims of veracity are put forward and instrumentalized.<\/p>\n

What is the truth?
\nWhere are its headquarters?
\nWhere is its board of directors?
\nWhere is its legal team?
\nWhere are its bodyguards?
\nWhere is its marketing?
\nWho are its overseers?
\nWho handles follow-up?
\nWho are its media sponsors?
\nHow does it sell?
\nHas it gone public?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What are its shares going for?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Heavily censored and even banned from publication for a time, Krynicki certainly witnessed the manipulation of \u2018truth\u2019 on multiple levels. He was a prominent figure, with Bara\u0144czak and Adam Zagajewski, of the \u201cNew Wave\u201d of Polish poetry, a group of poets who wrote against the state\u2019s subversion of language. Unlike them, however, he remained in Poland. Although he has referred to himself \u201cunfit for exile,\u201d his sardonic poem \u201cThis Country\u201d acknowledges the fact that fitness has nothing to do with exile.<\/p>\n

In this country? Yes, I stayed in this country.
\nExile comes in many shapes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and places.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Born in a Nazi work camp in Austria in 1943 to parents who were Polish peasants deported as slave laborers from Western Ukraine, Krynicki, along with his mother, was later forcibly resettled from their home in what had become the Soviet Union to former German territories awarded to Poland after the war. He compresses the geo-political maelstrom of his personal history into a three-line poem titled Folk Etymology.<\/p>\n

I was born in Austria during the war
\nso my village schoolmates from Poland called me Kangaroo.
\nBut usually for them I was Russky, Kraut, Jew.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For his classmates, indifferent to finer points of geography, Austria might as well be Australia. Their sense of superiority is captured concisely and exquisitely in the italics of from Poland since they themselves were no doubt also relocated, not from the suspect areas like the Ukraine, the Soviet Union, or the former German Reich, but from \u201creal\u201d Poland\u2014justification enough to turn on the \u201cforeigner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although written under specific historical conditions, Krynicki\u2019s poetry transcends its particular situation, raising the political to the metaphysical. You\u2019re All Free details no less than the human condition.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re all free\u2014says the guard
\nand the iron gate shuts<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

this time from the other side.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Language, connection, and communication, fragile and tentative as they are, are rare defenses against internal and external restrictions.<\/p>\n

Selected from six poetry collections published between 1969 and 2010, Magnetic Point also includes touching love poems, poems of mysticism and spirituality, and haiku that is sparked by, as Clare Cavanagh states in her illuminating introduction, \u201chis relentless, ethically charged attention.\u201d Because of the richness, elusive irony, and compactness of Krynicki\u2019s poems, it is tempting to quote them in full one after the other. I will end only by urging you to pick up a copy of Magnetic Point right away\u2014it will help you whether or not you are in an hour of need. After all, help, like exile, comes in many shapes and places.<\/p>\n

Poor moth, I can\u2019t help you,
\nI can only turn out the light.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI Can\u2019t Help You,\u201d Ryszard Krynicki<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s entry from the BTBA poetry longlist is from writer and translator Tess Lewis, who also has a title longlisted on the fiction side of things. Magnetic Point by Ryszard Krynicki, translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh (Poland, New Directions) To write so that a hungry man might think it\u2019s bread? bq., First feed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":395846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67476],"tags":[66446,49386,32256,67936,56,67946,37876],"class_list":["post-395576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-best-translated-book-awards","tag-btba-2018","tag-btba-poetry","tag-clare-cavanagh","tag-magnetic-point","tag-new-directions","tag-ryszard-krynicki","tag-why-this-book-should-win"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395576"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":396306,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395576\/revisions\/396306"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}