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Six poems
Ewa Chrusciel
Poet and translator Ewa Chrusciel
has two books in Polish,
Furkot
and
Sopilki,
and two books in English:
Strata
, and the just-published
Contraband of Hoopoe .Jorie Graham writes:
The excitement one experiences reading the Polish and American poet
Ewa Chrusciel's new book is hard to describe. If one made an amalgam of
Darwin, early Hejinian, Byzantine art, Near Eastern books of wisdom,
Ponge, Pavese, sacred Hopi and Amerindian texts, one still wouldn't be
able to come up with the magical contraband this vessel is carrying. It is
thrilling, wild and salvific. The book is written by an immigrant, and that
immigrant is the human being. All is a source of wonder and horror to
this species. It is looking everywhere for clues as to what borders are—
what they are for, what happens when one breaches them, who does one
become when one adopts the mannerisms, the habits, the intelligence of
one's hosts. What is the host. In poems seeking safe passage through
institutions secular and transcendent, through signals given us by the
natural world, by habit, custom, sign, disguise, these urgent works
explode onto the American poetic landscape. Authenticity emanates from
every word, as well as originality, sassy humor and bracing images,
objects, rituals, and queries from cultures in every old world trying to find
right translation into this so-called new one. I would listen closely to
what the ancient and near-extinct Hoopoe conveys. It really knows
something crucial.