#adam zagajewski

[apoemaday]

Try to Praise the Mutilated World

by Adam Zagajewski tr. Clare Cavanagh

Try to praise the mutilated world. Remember June’s long days, and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew. The nettles that methodically overgrow the abandoned homesteads of exiles. You must praise the mutilated world. You watched the stylish yachts and ships; one of them had a long trip ahead of it, while salty oblivion awaited others. You’ve seen the refugees heading nowhere, you’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully. You should praise the mutilated world. Remember the moments when we were together in a white room and the curtain fluttered. Return in thought to the concert where music flared. You gathered acorns in the park in autumn and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars. Praise the mutilated world and the grey feather a thrush lost, and the gentle light that strays and vanishes and returns.

[petaltexturedskies]

Adam Zagajewski, tr. by Clare Cavanagh, from "Try to Praise the Mutilated World”

[firstfullmoon]

Adam Zagajewski, “A Flame,” trans. Renata Gorczynski and Clare Cavanaugh

[havingapoemwithyou]

a flame by Adam Zagajewski

[woundgallery]

Adam Zagajewski (translated by Clare Cavanagh

[gennsoup]

Autumn is always too early. The peonies are still blooming, bees are still working out ideal states, and the cold bayonets of autumn suddenly glint in the fields and the wind rages.

Adam Zagajewski, Autumn

[ma-pi-ma]

Un gatto nero esce per salutarci

come per dire, guarda me

e non qualche vecchia chiesa romanica.

Io sono vivo.

Adam Zagajewski

[seemoreandmore]

The world is the same as it always was, full of shadows and anticipation. -Adam Zagajewski

[apesoformythoughts]

“Try to praise the mutilated world. Remember June's long days, and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine. The nettles that methodically overgrow the abandoned homesteads of exiles. You must praise the mutilated world. You watched the stylish yachts and ships; one of them had a long trip ahead of it, while salty oblivion awaited others. You've seen the refugees going nowhere, you've heard the executioners sing joyfully. You should praise the mutilated world. Remember the moments when we were together in a white room and the curtain fluttered. Return in thought to the concert where music flared. You gathered acorns in the park in autumn and leaves eddied over the earth's scars. Praise the mutilated world and the gray feather a thrush lost, and the gentle light that strays and vanishes and returns.”

— Adam Zagajewski: “Try to Praise the Mutilated World” [transl. Clare Cavanagh]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Dramatic mid-air battle between rabbits, skilfully captured by Japanese photographers Takayuki and Mora Nakamura. [Beauty Of Mother Earth] 

* * * * 

"In our day, we confine ourselves at the best of times to discussing the imagination. The word "imagination" is beautiful and vast, but it doesn't hold everything.

But what is the spirit, the spiritual life? If only I were up to defining such things! Robert Musil says that the spirit synthesizes intellect and emotion. It's a good working definition, for all its concision.

In the case of poetry, literature, it's simpler to say - theologians know a thing or two about this - what the spirit isn't. It's not psychoanalytic any more than it is behavioral, sociological, or political. It is holistic, and in it are reflected, as in an astronaut's helmet, the earth, the stars, and a human face.

These are difficult and dangerous considerations."  - Adam Zagajewski commonplace

[whiskey river]

[riverbird]

"How much patience it takes to bear the slow duration of life. The small eternities in which we bathe like sparrows in puddles do not add up. Someone drinks cocoa from a porcelain cup, and two hundred yards away an innocent man perishes." Adam Zagajewski, Two Cities: On Exile, History, and the Imagination

[orpheuslament]

going to Try to Praise the Mutilated World anyone want anything

[firstfullmoon]

Yes, I think it is a good description: poetry amplifies, exaggerates, puts emphasis on things and feelings, on thoughts and dreams that go almost unnoticed in everyday life. Amplifies them and stops them, makes them immobile so that we can freeze contemplating them. And it’s probably totally impossible to live like that, to have so much attention for detail in our days, which fly over our heads like supersonic jets. On the other hand, no, it’s not a good description in the sense that actually our true life is more present in poetry (art) than in these hasty days. Poetry gives us back life as it really is, as it should be experienced, in its grandeur and in its misery. So perhaps we should be saying not that “poetry is exaggeration” but “life as we know it is diminished, a bit crippled,” regarded through the lens of litotes. Life is understatement; poetry doesn’t exaggerate.

— Adam Zagajewski, from “Slight Exaggeration: An Interview with Adam Zagajewski”

[zarabellasdreams]

Adam Zagajewski

[victusinveritas]

Adam Zagajewski , "Try to Praise the Mutilated World."

[gennsoup]

I've seen sunflowers dangling their heads at dusk, as if a careless hangman had gone strolling through the gardens. September's sweet dust gathered on the windowsill and lizards hid in the bends of walls. I've taken long walks, craving one thing only: lightning, transformation, you.

Adam Zagajewski, Transformation