Things to Translate
Published on 25. July 1991
Book
Paperback/Softback
80 pages
978-1-85224-155-1 (ISBN)
Description
Piotr Sommer is one of Poland's leading poets. The translations were made with the help of leading British and American poets, including John Ashbery, Douglas Dunn and D.J. Enright. This edition is now out of print but most of the poems are included in his later selection Continued (2005).
'Piotr Sommer's poetry is low-key and terse: to adapt one of his phrases, it wants to say nothing it doesn't need to. Irony there is, but it keeps its head down, while the occasional uncertain joke raises an uncertain smile. Obliquity is the rule. An old dog entertains metaphysical thoughts, and in its own way expresses an opinion. or a knock on the door announces a milkwoman, not the secret police, but the one caller mirrors the other. This collection is marked by a disenchanted cheerfulness, a looking (or squinting) on the bright side. Even if new bathroom fittings were somehow acquired, it would still be necessary to get up early. And obtain a travel permit is a joyful event, denied to those who can go wherever they like. In one of his poems Czeslaw Milosz is amazed that "my Muse, Mnemosyne" fails to diminish his amazement. Sommer shares this same muse: "The heart doesn't give up easily." Countries with long and tortured histories have long and sometimes precious memories." - D.J. Enright
'Piotr Sommer's poetry is low-key and terse: to adapt one of his phrases, it wants to say nothing it doesn't need to. Irony there is, but it keeps its head down, while the occasional uncertain joke raises an uncertain smile. Obliquity is the rule. An old dog entertains metaphysical thoughts, and in its own way expresses an opinion. or a knock on the door announces a milkwoman, not the secret police, but the one caller mirrors the other. This collection is marked by a disenchanted cheerfulness, a looking (or squinting) on the bright side. Even if new bathroom fittings were somehow acquired, it would still be necessary to get up early. And obtain a travel permit is a joyful event, denied to those who can go wherever they like. In one of his poems Czeslaw Milosz is amazed that "my Muse, Mnemosyne" fails to diminish his amazement. Sommer shares this same muse: "The heart doesn't give up easily." Countries with long and tortured histories have long and sometimes precious memories." - D.J. Enright
Reviews / Votes
Piotr Sommer is the great poet of "everyday loneliness, contrary to your self, perhaps". Like Frank O'Hara, whom he has translated into Polish, he is on the lookout for what he calls "improper names" - the very ones that allow us to construe the unkempt and taciturn world that surrounds us. -- John AshberyMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Tyne and Wear
United Kingdom
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 138 mm
Weight
105 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-85224-155-1 (9781852241551)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Piotr Sommer was born in 1948. He has published ten books of poetry in Polish; a selected poems, Po ciemku tez, 2013 (Also in the Dark); many translations (John Ashbery, John Berryman, Bertolt Brecht, John Cage, D.J. Enright, Seamus Heaney, Jenny Holzer, Kenneth Koch, Robert Lowell, Frank O'Hara, Charles Reznikoff, James Schuyler); two books of essays on poetry and translation: Smak detalu, 2015 (A Taste for Detail), and Po stykach, 2005 (Lines of Contact); as well as Ucieczka w bok: pytania i odpowiedzi, 2016 (Escaping on the Side: Questions and Answers), a volume of interviews with him. He has also published two poetry books for children. His editorial bibliography includes several anthologies of Polish poetry and essays, the most recent being O nich tutaj: ksiazka o jezyku i przekladzie, 2016 (About Them Over Here: a Book on Language and Translation) which collects the best essays published in Literatura na Swiecie (Literature in the World), a monthly devoted to translations of foreign writing into Polish, which he's been directing since 1994. He has taught poetry in several American universities, and his poems have been translated into many languages. Two of the English collections - Things to Translate (1991) and Continued (2005) - were published by Bloodaxe. Trias Chapbook series brought out Overdoing It (2013).