Viscera: Eight Voices from Poland

This book is an anthology of selected verse from eight female Polish poets: Anna Adamowicz, Maria Cyranowicz, Hanna Janczak, Natalia Malek, Joanna Oparek, Zofia Skrzypulec, Katarzyna Szaulińska, and Ilona Witkowska. The editor has chosen to represent exclusively female Polish poets to try to correct the imbalance of Polish poets known to the Anglophone world, who are mostly male. Many of these women are quite young, ranging in age (among those whose birth years are provided) from Zofia Skrzypulec (born in 2000) to Joanna Oparek (born in 1967). They are also all noted poets who have been awarded various poetry prizes and have been widely published. Translations of the poems of several have already been published in Anglophone poetry journals.The book begins with an introduction by the editor, followed by English translations of selections from each poet. This is followed by short statements about their art from each of the poets, also in English. The second half of the book is in Polish, beginning with Polish versions of the poets’ statements followed by the originals of the poems translated in the first part of the book. This arrangement makes it more difficult to compare the translations with the originals, but probably serves the purposes of the book well, which seems to be to both introduce these poets to an Anglophone readership and to be an interesting anthology of contemporary Polish poetry for audiences familiar with the Polish language. I found the personal statements of the poets very interesting and insightful, but I was disappointed that one poet, Joanna Oparek, chose to quote a secondary source about her (Karol Poręba and Jakub Skurtys, Labratorium) rather than providing a statement of her own. The personal statements of the other poets provide a freshness and straightforwardness that the jargon of literary critics does not contain.It is very difficult to say much generically about the poems as a whole, since, of course, each poet has her own style. Still, I do think that the title of the anthology, Viscera, is quite apt, since all of the poems do have a visceral quality. Adamowicz's sparse imagery references historic space travel and often makes comparisons between humans and animals. She seems to have a fondness for anaphora. Cyranowicz avoids punctuation and capitalization, and only rarely uses significant titles. She uses stream of consciousness with flowing phrases on subjects as diverse as the process of writing to a trip to a hairdresser to a political protest. Janczak makes playful use of language and often includes garden imagery in her poems. She also plays on conversations with her son. Malek's poems are once again very spare and personal. One interesting poem, “Corridors” Korytarze is a bit of an exception, piling on repetitions of corridors, both real and symbolic, of various functions. Oparek, the most established of the poets included, is represented by selections from her work Berlin Porn. These poems of observations of the Berlin Pornography Festival are again quite visceral, using references to serial killers of prostitutes and maimed mermaids. Skrzypulec's longish poems combine a voyeuristic tendency with extreme myopia (e.g., concentrating on the images left in her eyes after viewing something bright). She is also fond of wordplay: her play on ananas pineapple and banan banana in Polish is rather cleverly rendered by Tardi in translation as the play between the English lemon and melon. I find Szaulińska's poetry to be the most powerful in the collection. The first poem included is about Isaac and Iphigenia, both sacrificial victims, or would-be sacrificial victims. The poet uses the relation of the first letter of their names, i, in its Polish meaning of “and,” and plays with the separation of head from body. Elsewhere, she plays with the destructive power of volcanoes. Finally, Witkowska's very spare, often bitter poems are laced with obscenities, but they pack a powerful punch.All of the poets use free verse, but they range from very sparse images to longer reflections. They all are very careful with the sounds of their poetry, often using alliteration, assonance, consonance, and various plays on words. Overall, the translations are quite clear, and they do stand up to one of the most important touchstones of poetry translations: they read like poems on their own merit. Some attention has been paid to reproduce alliteration in the English versions where alliteration has been used in the original, though not always in exactly the same places. Occasionally, the titles of poems are changed, and it is not always clear why. However, since the translators seem to have worked with the poets, such changes may have been made with the poets’ blessing. Translations must often deal with the hurdles of dealing with the original playfulness of language, and the compromises do not always work. For example, in the poem “i;phigenia / i;saac” i;figenia/i;zaak by Szaulińska, the translator, Mark Tardi, does not capture the double meaning of the Polish word “i” and and its position as the first letter of the names of the two sacrificial victims. Still, given the many difficulties of poetry translation, the translators of this volume are to be commended for their many successes. This volume is a welcome addition to the availability of Polish poetry in English, and the editor and translators should be thanked for bringing these powerful poems to our attention.