Krystyna Miłobędzka is an eminent Polish poet now in her mid-80s. This short, career-spanning bilingual selection is the only book of her poetry available in English.
The two introductions were helpful in setting context - though I read the first (by translator Elzbieta Wojcik-Leese) 10 days before reading the poems, by which time it had percolated down into the idea of Miłobędzka as a minimalist poet who worked towards increasingly briefer, pared forms over the years. It was an idea I could relate to, as during a brief phase, 5-6 years ago, of feeling I could write poetry (something I've otherwise been unable to do), it was the removal of words, that seemed at least half the essence of the enterprise.
At first, Miłobędzka's poems felt too opaque / oblique, and I missed the background understanding of the poet's life I'd had when reading Wioletta Greg's Finite Formulae and Theories of Chance (also from Arc Publications and read on Scribd), via having previously read Greg's autobiographical novella. I couldn't picture who or where Miłobędzka might be writing about to the same extent.
But they also seem very intuitive poems, and I found that reading them when tired - a kind of hypnagogic insight - at a point of consciousness when I couldn't really construct full sentences myself, but readily visualised dreamlike images, produced a connection with these increasingly short poems that used only the most important words, with very little filler or explanation.
Interpreting them as poems of the domestic sphere: household, children, garden, nearby walks, made them more lucid. But sharp as the legendary Damascus steel, and with experimental skill, the form is far from that commonly associated with domestic fiction, and the honed, orderly feel is different again from the current decade's books of writing fragments and scraps focused on home life by innovative English-language female writers. It gave me the impression of a woman of extraordinary ability who had nonetheless spent much of her time as a housewife - perhaps because she found it inspirational and conducive to her writing. However a look at the Polish Wikipedia entry (via Google translate) indicates she also worked in arts venues. Whether or not the domestic subject matter is a feminist choice by author or by the editors of this selection, or simply incidental, I do not know - but this kind of experimental writing elevates it intellectually and spiritually.
It isn't indicated which poems are from which collections, or where and if they match original, uninterrupted publication order, but several are in in satisfying thematic sequences. The final one focuses on the themes of nothingness, sand, and the transience of all objects, the body and of words, only to be followed by the one-word exhortatory poem "mów! / speak!" (as if realising and concluding that one is still here and should), followed by a somewhat longer piece:
I am. Co-alive, co-active, co-guilty. Co-green, co-tree. I co-exist.
You do not know yet what it means. Gifted with diffusion. I
vanish I am. I co-endure (with You) on this glassy day (with this
glassy day into which I vanish) which vanishes with me so
lightly. I don’t know what it means. Co-open with the window,
co-flowing with the river. I am in order to know I vanish? I van-
ish in order to know I am? All of me but all of me nowhere to
be found. Co-fleeting, co-skyward. Half a century I have lived
for this!
I'd been reading Krasznahorkai, and about him, recently, and was reminded of the Buddhist / yogic aspects in his work.
As the Miłobędzka's poems often use simple words, I could understand, on the most elementary level, parts of the Polish versions of some of the smaller poems. (It would be interesting to know if the description of the poems as 'ungrammatical' means she sometimes uses non-standard noun cases in Polish; if so, extra use of the nominative might have been why I found words easier to recognise.) I was usually pleased and surprised by (as far as I could tell) the fidelity of some translations, although of course it was not always possible to replicate the rhythm of sequences of similar-sounding words. The one of the few mis-steps among these shorter poems I tried to read in original as well as English was, I felt, with jest rosnące drzewem / the is growing into a tree. Polish does not have articles, and in that example, I felt the English would have worked better without them too, letting all the lines begin with "is", not "the is", also reflecting the minimalism of the later poems. "Isness" is an idea already present in earlier in this collection, so it would be apparent to readers that it related to Miłobędzka's previous use of it. Where "the is" did work, like here (it works because of the 'of', I think):
the is of the silence in the room
the is of the walls, each so different
the is of the sunshine on the curtain
the greying is of the dust
through the thin is of the glass
the is of the sparrow outside the window
the is of the child on the grass, chasing a butterfly
the is of the butterfly in the net
the floating is of the cloud
and once again: I am
in this vast
circular spherical nobody’s
agape virulent scorching
grass-strong swift-winged quick-legged
dripping rabid
acute
is
[That is agape as in gaping, not agape, universal love - and in Polish there is an overtly mentioned grasshopper only implied in the English.]
These poems will not be to everyone's taste, and some people would find them pretentious, inaccessible etc. - although these readers aren't likely to pick up small-press translated poetry in the first place.
This is the first year I have personally, inwardly *wanted to* read more books by women (i.e. to read an equal number of books by male and female writers) rather than feeling like I was being harangued to do so by the online literary world. It is a relatively tricky goal when added to that of reading more Polish books. For example the Goodreads list Polish Books Published in English, aiming to cover all books of whatever age, currently has 20%, 45/229 female-authored books on it, and regardless of the additional translation barrier, Polish literary culture has always been more male-dominated than British. This poetry collection was one of a small number of books by Polish women authors I could access inexpensively or free.
I am very glad I ended up reading it: it soon became apparent that it was too interesting to be a 'duty' book, and it left me with a deep sense of awe or reverence, which I had certainly not expected.
It's rare I want to start a book again as soon as I've finished it, so that has to be 5 stars, doesn't it? Yet somehow I'd feel presumptuous giving this 5 stars. The mood of the book itself provoked a sense of modesty or humility (quite different from being down on oneself). And then there was the sense of complexity, and with it the worry that I might not be able to access or interpret the poems in the same way again when feeling less sharp. I can't adequately communicate what it's like to fully inhabit the felt sense and muscle memory of what it was like to ride a bike and to be trying it again and unable to do it and be about to topple because that balance component doesn't work as finely as the average person's any more, and the ability is gone, although you can feel what it was like to have it, right down to the position of that groove you used to find and hit - but like that. "Getting" poems like this (especially without extensive notes) is a mysterious and intuitive and sometimes fleeting process.
Some understandings can be explained confidently, like the "speak!" above; some is more personal and experiential, like reading "a family of tables, a family of doors" as a friendly personification of the household furniture as creatures of their own kind, familiar both to oneself and to each other (perhaps the English 'a nest of tables' helps?) as well as a way of describing how the human family in the house gathers and moves.
On a sentence-by-sentence level this is the most challenging book I've read this year (I'm glad I didn't know that before I started) although that is significantly mitigated by its brevity. These are almost koan-like poems that, where the meaning isn't immediately apparent, may benefit from being looked at for a while, letting ideas and responses emerge. When I'd finished it, I went back to the beginning again to see what else appeared in the early poems after I'd acclimatised to Miłobędzka's approach, and because the feeling brought on by reading the poems was so peaceful, one I wanted to perpetuate.
(read & reviewed Nov 2018; the review on Goodreads.)
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