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.