Ilya Kaminsky on Poems of Miron Bialoszewski

By Ilya Kaminsky — Published on December 7, 2009

Poems of Miron Bialoszewski is the book I hope to one day hold in my hands. A great post-war Polish poet, Bialoszewski wrote work radically different from that of his contemporaries—Milosz, Swir, Kamienska, Herbert, and Szymborska—but his poetry was just as powerful and important to the development of the contemporary European lyric. His work is translated in many other languages, but in English we only have five poems currently available in print in Postwar Polish Poetry: An Anthology, edited by Czeslaw Milosz. His earlier, tiny collection, The Revolution of Things: Selected Poems (translated by Andrzei Busza and Bogndan Czaykowski) is very incomplete and is long out of print. When I mentioned this to Tomas Salamun in a recent conversation, Tomas’ face lit up: “Bialoszewski, when he is translated and available in English, will cause an explosion in American poetry!” One hopes so.

A recipient of a Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship and numerous awards, Ilya Kaminsky is currently at work on the Ecco Anthology of International Poetry.

More from The Quarterly Conversation:

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• Ilya Kaminsky on Poems of Miron Bialoszewski