The World Shared, published in the prestigious Lannan Translations Selection Series, introduces English-speaking readers to one of Poland’s most exciting contemporary poets and editors. This bilingual volume was co-translated and edited by Piotr Florczyk and Boris Dralyuk. Rochester: BOA Editions, 2014.

Dariusz Sośnicki is a poet, editor, essayist, and translator. He graduated from the Adam Mickiewicz University with a degree in Philosophy. In addition to many award-winning volumes of poems, he recently published a translation of W.H. Auden’s “Thanksgiving for a Habitat.” From 2005-2013 he worked at W.A.B. Publishing House as editor of Polish contemporary fiction. He lives in Poznań, Poland.


 

Reading Dariusz Sośnicki’s poems, Americans may recognize John Ashbery’s quick jump-cuts and the moral seriousness of Jorie Graham, mixed with the quirky anger and humor of, perhaps, Bill Knott, but the results sound totally fresh. Here is a poet who knows his country is equally affected by its “disastrous geopolitical situation,” as by “The Track Changes feature in a text editor // Email // Google, Ling, and Wikipedia.” This poetry harbors venomous sarcasm, even cynicism, but it works, like a sand blaster on old paint, in the service of new beauty, as though the self, roiling in history, purging its dark energies, could at last speak the truth.

—Craig Morgan Teicher, author of To Keep Love Blurry

“From the standpoint of human civilization this scene isn’t too comforting,” Dariusz Sośnicki allows in a characteristic understatement. Global warming leads him to muse sadly on the obsolescence of the autumn coat; a winter thaw yields an “oasis of rotten grass, of concrete; puddles” near a “dirty snowman in the neighbor’s garden”; and in May homely insects give way to “furious flies, / a new strain deprived of memory and principles.” What is truly wonderful, then, is that these poems nonetheless steadily engage us with their surprises, their quickness, their mysteries, and, often, captivate us with their invention.

—Stephen Yenser, author of Blue Guide