Sunday, October 16, 2011

Thought for the Day

You write a poem. You are alive. . .
I think that when you write poems you aspire
to something whole that's bigger than simply lament.
In poetry I think you try to reconstruct what's humanity.
Humanity is always a mix of crying and laughing.
~ Adam Zagajewski*
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* Quoted in "The Poet of Sept. 11", The Daily Beast, September 5, 2011 (This article appeared in Newsweek Magazine. The poem "Try to praise the mutilated world" is here.)

Profile of Adam Zagajewski (b. 1945) at The Poetry Foundation

Profile of Adam Zagajewski at infopoland (Fifteen of Zagajewski's poems can be found here.)

Zagajewski's most recent collection of poems is Unseen Hand (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011). His other volumes include Eternal Enemies (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009) and Without End: New and Selected Poems (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003). Many of his poems can be found in The New Yorker, including "Try to praise the mutilated world", hyperlinked above.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Maureen, what a lovely thought. Thank you for sharing! I've just started writing poetry again after many years. It truly does give me a heightened sense of pleasure in life. I enjoyed visiting your blog and was impressed by your layout. Nice and clean! Enjoy your writing Sunday! Anna

Anonymous said...

Thank you for assembling all things Zagajewski in this post. I am such a fan of his work and like knowing more. You are so thorough, and right on.