They Carry a Promise: Selected Poems

This bracing collection marks the first appearance in English of the Polish poet Janusz Szuber, hailed as the greatest discovery in Polish poetry of the late twentieth century when, in his late forties, he began publishing the work hed been producing for almost thirty years. Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska has called him a “superb poet,” and Zbigniew Herbert said that “his poetry speaks to the hard part of the soul.”

Szuber is an intensely elegant writer whose poems are short and accessible; his work is poised between the rigors of making poetry and life itself in all its messy glory, between the devastations of history and the quiet act of observing our place in it all. “Grammar is my / Adopted country,” Szuber explains in one poem, yearning at the same time toward the physical, the breathing world: “Id prefer something less ambiguous: / The bony parachutes of leaves, / The flame of goosefoot, from a frosty page / A star bent over me.” Throughout, there is an intense quiet and modesty to Szubers verse, whether he is observing the heron in flight, the froth of blossoming apple trees, or the human images in an old photo album. “Who will carve her fragile profile / in ivory . . . Who in truthful verse will briefly tell / of eternity, impermanent as a broken fan?”

In lovely, astute translations by Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough, the poems in They Carry a Promise are an exhilarating introduction to the work of a contemporary Polish master.

An intensely elegant poet whose works are short and accessible, Szuber's poems are poised between life itself in all its messy glory and the quiet act of observing humanity's place in it all. [Szuber's] poetry speaks to the hard part of the soul--Zbigniew Herbert.

The first appearance in English of the Polish poet Janusz Szuber, hailed as the greatest discovery in Polish poetry of the late twentieth century when, in his late forties, he began publishing his work. Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska has called him a superb poet, and Zbigniew Herbert said that his poetry speaks to the hard part of the soul.

An intensely elegant poet whose poems are short and accessible, Szuber's work is poised between life itself in all its messy glory and the rigors of making poetry--between the devastations of history and the quiet act of observing our place in it all. Grammar is my / adopted country, Szuber explains in one poem, yearning at the same time toward the physical, the breathing world: I'd prefer something less ambiguous: / the bony parachutes of leaves, the flame of goosefoot, from a frosty page / A star bent over me. With lovely, astute translations by Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough, They Carry a Promise is an exciting introduction to the work of a contemporary Polish master.

About a Boy Stirring Jam

A wooden spoon for stirring jam,

Dripping sweet tar, while in the pan

Plum magma's bubbles blather.

For someone who can't grasp the whole

There's salvation in the remembered detail.

What, back then, did I know about that?

The real, hard as a diamond,

Was to happen in the indefinable

Future, and everything seemed

Only a sign of what was to come. How naive.

Now I know inattention is an unforgivable sin

And each particle of time has an ultimate dimension.

Janusz Szuber was born in 1947 and has published eighteen collections of poetry in Poland. His work has been translated into numerous languages, and he has received a number of awards, including the Kazimiera Illakowiczówna Prize for Best Poetic Debut and the highest award from the Polish Foundation of Culture. He lives in the old city of Sanok.

Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbroughs translations of Polish poetry have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, TriQuarterly, The Paris Review, and Image, among other publications. She divides her time between Kraków and Fresno, California.