Poet of the Month 038: EWA LIPSKA

 

EWA LIPSKA
May 2006

 

CHILDREN

 

 

Children meet at nostalgic dinner-parties.
Children meet in executive sessions.
Children are experienced.
Some of them cannot recognize a swan.

 

Children have identity papers.  Birth certificates.
Health records.  Certificates of death.
Children choose their leaders who
make speeches praising rocking horses.

 

Children hijack planes and kidnap ministers.
Children emigrate to the ends of earth.
Children submit reports about their parents.
Children fight for the rights of wooden dolls.
Children sit in astrakhan fur coats.
Pink cakes fly through the air.
Children recall the fallen Roman Empire
and nod their little heads.
In the huge kindergarten of nations
children play ball and
spit cherry stones at each other.
They switch on an artificial sun
that rises like a mitigating circumstance.
Then children put aside their toys
and start to produce some new children.

 

 

 

 

date unspecified

 

 

 

 

 

Translated by

  

SUSAN BASSNETT 

 

and  

 

PIOTR KUHIWCZAK

 

 

 

 

The following biographical statement written by Ad van Rijsewijk and translated from Dutch by Michele Hutchison appears on the Poetry International Rotterdam website.  [It is re-posted here for information purposes only and, like the poem re-posted above, remains its author's exclusive copyright-protected intellectual property.]

 

Ewa Lipska is one of the most important Polish poets of her generation.  She studied painting at the Academy for Fine Arts in Krakow, and from 1970 to 1980 she worked as an editor at the Krakow publishing house Wydawnictwo Literackie.  In the 1990s she lived for seven years in Vienna, where she was assistant manager of the Polish Cultural Foundation.

 

She debuted as a poet in 1967 with the collection Wiersze [Poems], and from then until 1978 she published four more collections, from Drugi zbior wierszy [The Second Poetry Collection] up to Piaty zbior wierszy [The Fifth Poetry Collection].  She has now published more than twenty poetry collections and several anthologies.  Her most recent poetry collection Pomarańca Newtona [Newton’s Orange] was published in 2007, and her first novel, Sefer, in 2009.

 

Lipska’s work has been awarded various literary prizes and her books have been translated into fifteen languages, including English, German, French, Spanish, Swedish and Hebrew.  Two of her collections have appeared in the Netherlands: Mensen voor beginners [Human Beginners] (De Geus, 2000) and Splinter (De Geus, 2007).

 

Although Lipska is sometimes considered as part of the 'New Wave' group of the 1970s, she distances herself from such associations, preferring to operate autonomously.  Over the years, her mistrust of the language of her daily surroundings, for her a language of masks and lies, has grown.  In response, Lipska has developed an inverted language, which is confrontational and frequently ominous.  Her poems are lucid, and in few words, she puts forth her own reality with gentle irony.  Fascinated by human behaviour, she strips away the false meaning of words, proving that we’re still merely 'Human Beginners'.                      

  

 

 

Text © 2010 Ad van Rijsewijk

 

 

 

Use the links below to read more poems by Polish poet EWA LIPSKA and learn more about her life and work:

 

 

http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/contributor/ewa-lipska

 

 

https://culture.pl/en/search/ewa%20lipska

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Last updated 13 April 2021

 

Think About It 016: LOUISE BOGAN

What we suffer, what we endure, what we muff, what we kill, what we miss, what we are guilty of, is done by us, as individuals, in private. –– I wanted to kill a few interns this morning, and I shall want to kill some nurses tonight, and I know that it is a lousy system that keeps the poor, indigent old from dying as they should…To hell with the crowd.  To hell with the meetings, and the public speeches.  Life and death occur, as they must, but they are all bound up with love and hatred, in the individual bosom, and it is a sin and a shame to try to organize or dictate them.

Letter to Rolfe Humphries [23 December 1936]


 

Use the link below to read a short post about What The Woman Lived: The Selected Letters of Louise Bogan 1920–1970 (1973):

 

http://neglectedbooks.com/?p=3796

  

LOUISE BOGAN (1897–1970) was a North American poet whose work was admired by, among others, WH AUDEN.  She also served as Poetry Critic for The New York Times from 1921 until her retirement in 1969.

 

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The Write Advice 084: EDITH WHARTON

None of my relations ever spoke to me of my books, either to praise or to blame –– they simply ignored them; and among the immense tribe of my New York cousins, though it included many with whom I was on terms of affectionate intimacy, the subject was avoided as though it were a kind of family disgrace, which might be condoned but could not be forgotten.  Only one eccentric widowed cousin, living a life of lonely invalidism, turned to my novels for occasional distraction, and had the courage to tell me so.
      At first I felt this indifference acutely; but now I no longer cared, for my recognition as a writer had transformed my life.  I had made my own friends, and my books were beginning to serve as an introduction to my fellow writers.  But it was amusing to think that, whereas in London even my modest achievements would have opened many doors, in my native New York they were felt only as a drawback and an embarrassment.

A Backward Glance (1934)


 

Use the link below to visit the website of THE EDITH WHARTON SOCIETY:

https://edithwhartonsociety.wordpress.com/

 

Special thanks to Rhonda Thwaite for 
sending me this quote.

 

 

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Think About It 015: NOAM CHOMSKY

If you care about other people, that's now a very dangerous idea.  If you care about other people, you might try to organize to undermine power and authority.  That's not going to happen if you care only about yourself.  Maybe you can become rich, but you don't care whether other people's kids can go to school, or can afford food to eat, or things like that. In the United States, that's called 'libertarian' for some wild reason.  I mean, it's actually highly authoritarian, but that doctrine is extremely important for power systems as a way of atomizing and undermining the public.
      That's why unions had the slogan, 'solidarity,' even though they may not have lived up to it.  And that's what really counts:  solidarity, mutual aid, care for one another and so on.  And it's really important for power systems to undermine that ideologically, so huge efforts go into it.  Even trying to stimulate consumerism is an effort to undermine it.  Having a market society automatically carries with it an undermining of solidarity.  For example, in the market system you have a choice:  You can buy a Toyota or you can buy a Ford, but you can't buy a subway because that's not offered.  Market systems don't offer common goods; they offer private consumption.  If you want a subway, you're going to have to get together with other people and make a collective decision.  Otherwise, it's simply not an option within the market system, and as democracy is increasingly undermined, it's less and less of an option within the public system.  All of these things converge, and they're all part of general class war.

Interview [Salon, 1 December 2013]



 

Use the link below to visit the website of North American linguist, philosopher, political activist, social commentator and writer NOAM CHOMSKY:

 

https://chomsky.info/

 

 

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Poet of the Month 037: BERNICE KENYON

 

Charles Scribner's Sons, 1951

 

 

 

 

FOR SILENCE

 

 

Since there is not, for you and me,
One instant of tranquility,
But always beating in the throat
Such clamor and such high confusion ––
Let us preserve the mind remote,
And build our silence of illusion.

 

Think for a little of those shining
Worlds where no man has set his foot:
Where dark and daylight have no meaning ––
Only as distance; where no root
Of deep disaster strikes and holds;
Where only wonderment unfolds.

 

Then you will find, most certainly,
That all you sought was fantasy.
The stream of life runs loud and wide,
Bearing us toward infinity.
How shall we learn to know –– to ride
The noise of this our destiny?
Here rest a moment –– rest you here,
Where your own thoughts are still and clear.

 

 

 

 

 

Night Sky 

 

(1951)

 

 

 

 

The following 1982 obituary appears on the website of The New York Times.  [It is re-posted here for information purposes only and, like the material posted above, remains its author's exclusive copyright-protected intellectual property.]

 

Bernice Lesbia Kenyon Gilkyson, a poet and a former story editor and editorial assistant at Charles Scribner's Sons, died Wednesday at Winsted (Connecticut) Memorial Hospital.

 

She was 84 years old and lived in New Hartford, Connecticut.

 

Mrs Gilkyson, who wrote under the name of Bernice Kenyon, was considered one of America's most important young female poets in the 1920s and 1930s and was ranked with Louise Bogan, Edna St Vincent Millay and Elinor Wylie.

 

Her first volume, Songs of Unrest, was published by Scribners in 1923.  Her two other published works were Meridian, which appeared in 1933, and Night Sky in 1951. In 1950, she shared a National Book Award with Robert Frost.

 

Mrs Gilkyson also wrote the libretto for the opera Landara, composed by her friend Efrem Zimbalist, which had its premiere in Philadelphia in 1956. She had completed her fourth volume, Mortal Music, shortly before her death.

 

Born in Oakside, Long Island, Mrs Gilkyson graduated from Wellesley College and went to work at the old Scribners Magazine as a story editor.  She became an editorial assistant to Maxwell Perkins in the Scribner's book division, working with such authors as Ernest Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald.

 

With her husband, T. Walter Gilkyson, a lawyer and novelist, Mrs. Gilkyson lived in Italy for two years, returning in 1930 and traveling before moving to New Hartford.

 

Her husband died in 1969; there are no survivors.

 

 

 

Use the link below to read a fascinating post about forgotten poet BERNICE KENYON on the Neglected Books website:

 

 

http://neglectedbooks.com/?p=3840

 

 

 

 

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The Write Advice 083: F SCOTT FITZGERALD

Nobody ever became a writer just by wanting to be one.  If you have anything to say, anything you feel nobody has ever said before, you have got to feel it so desperately that you will find some way to say it that nobody has ever found before, so that the thing you have to say and the way of saying it blend as one matter –– as indissolubly as if they were conceived together… It is an awfully lonesome business, and as you know, I never wanted you to go into it, but if you are going into it at all I want you to go into it knowing the sort of things that took me years to learn.

Letter to Scottie Fitzgerald [his daughter] (20 October 1936)



Use the link below to read another piece of sound advice F SCOTT FITZGERALD offered his daughter SCOTTIE:

 

https://awritersden.wordpress.com/2015/08/17/f-scott-fitzgerald-a-little-fatherly-advice-goes-a-long-way/

 

 

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Rockers & Mods 004: THE ACTION

THE ACTION c 1967

LAND OF 1000 DANCES

THE ACTION

Debut single, 1965

The Action are the great 'What if?' band of the Mod era –– an act which could have been huge had fate been a little kinder to it and music's most formidable enemy, ego, had not reared its ugly head to sabotage what, on paper at least, had seemed to be an exceptionally promising career.  Unrecognized geniuses or not, The Action were an inspired rhythm and blues band as their soulful cover of Chris Kenner's 1963 hit Land of 1000 Dances should certainly confirm.

 

Use the link below to discover more great music by THE ACTION:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCJ3WsHoRWA

 

 

Special thanks to those who take the time to upload music to YouTube.  Your efforts are appreciated by music lovers everywhere.

 

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Last updated 5 April 2021