by Piotr Sommer (Author), August Kleinzahler (Other)
Spontaneous, colloquial, and anti-conventional verse from a celebrated Polish writer .
Continued is a selection of poems by Piotr Sommer, spanning his career to date. A kind of poetic utterance, these "talk poems" are devoid of any singsong quality yet faithfully preserve all the melodies and rhythms of colloquial speech. Events and objects of ordinary, everyday life are related and described by the speaker in a deliberately deadpan manner. Yet a closer look at the language he uses, with all its ironic inflections and subtle "intermeanings," reveals that the poem's "message" should be identified more with the way it is spoken than with what it says. The poems in this volume were translated into English with the help of other notable poets, writers, and translators, including John Ashbery, D.J. Enright, and Douglas Dunn.
Author Biography
PIOTR SOMMER is a poet and translator of English, Irish, and American poetry. He is the author of eight books of poetry, including one in English, Things to Translate (1991), and two books of essays. Sommer lives outside Warsaw and works for a magazine of international writing. AUGUST KLEINZAHLER is a widely-published poet whose most recent book is The Strange Hours Travelers Keep (2003).