"The highway became the Red Sea.
We moved through the storm like a sheer valley.
You drove; I looked at you with love.""
--from "Storm"
"One of the most gifted and readable poets of his time, Adam Zagajewski is proving to be a contemporary classic. Few writers in either poetry or prose can be said to have attained the lucid intelligence and limpid economy of style that have become a matter of course with Zagajewski. It is these qualities, combined with his wry humor, gentle skepticism, and perpetual sense of history's dark possibilities, that have earned him a devoted international following. This collection, gracefully translated by Clare Cavanagh, finds the poet reflecting on place, language, and history. Especially moving here are his tributes to writers, friends known in person or in books--people such as Milosz and Sebald, Brodsky and Blake--which intermingle naturally with portraits of family members and loved ones. "Eternal Enemies" is a luminous meeting of art and everyday life. Adam Zagajewski was born in Lvov, Poland, in 1945. His previous books include "Tremor," "Canvas," "Mysticism for Beginners," "Without End," "Two Cities," "Another Beauty," and "A Defense of Ardor." He lives in Kracow, Paris, and Chicago.
Clare Cavanagh is a professor of Slavic languages and literatures at Northwestern University. She has translated numerous volumes of Polish poetry and prose, including the work of Wislawa Szymborska. One of the most gifted poets of our time, Adam Zagajewski is a contemporary classic. Few writers in either poetry or prose can be said to have attained the lucid intelligence and limped economy of style that are the trademarks of his work. It is these qualities, combined with his wry humor, gentle skepticism, and perpetual sense of history's dark possibilities, that have earned him a devoted international following. This collection, gracefully translated by Clare Cavanagh, finds the poet reflecting on place, language, and history. Especially moving are his tributes to writers, friends known in person or from books--people such as Milosz and Sebald, Brodsky and Blake. These poems intermingle naturally with portraits of family members and loved ones. "Eternal Enemies" is a luminous meeting of art and everyday life. "Not so long ago we had two incredible voices--Neruda and Milosz. Now we have Adam Zagajewski, who also speaks passionately from both the historical and the personal perspective, in poems reduced to a clean, lyrical clarity. In one poet's opinion (mine), he is now our greatest and truest representative, the most pertinent, impressive, meaningful poet of our time."--Mary Oliver "Not so long ago we had two incredible voices--Neruda and Milosz. Now we have Adam Zagajewski, who also speaks passionately from both the historical and the personal perspective, in poems reduced to a clean, lyrical clarity. In one poet's opinion (mine), he is now our greatest and truest representative, the most pertinent, impressive, meaningful poet of our time."--Mary Oliver
"Zagajewski's poems are visually rich and] startlingly fresh . . . Poetry and thinking for Zagajewski have to do with learning how to see clearly. His poems celebrate those rare moments when we catch a glimpse of a world from which all labels have been unpeeled . . . Indispensable."--Charles Simic, "The New York Review of Books
""Zagajewski's poems pull us from whatever routine threatens to dull our senses, from whatever might lull us into mere existence."--Philip Boehm, "The New York Times Book Review
"""Eternal Enemies" is Zagajewski's fifth book of poetry in English. It is also his most cohesive and moving to date, in no small part because it transcends the categories most frequently imposed on Polish poets by Anglophone readers. The forceful engagement with historical questions that initially attracted British and American readers to Polish poetry is present here, certainly, but the work is also irreducible to vaguely familiar events or the beatitudes about suffering and tragedy often cherished by those who have not lived through them. Rather, Zagajewski is a refreshingly incurable nostalgist: wherever he is, he cannot extract himself from distant places and people, nor can he ignore a past that is no less palpable for having been conceived in reverie. This has always been true of Zagajewski's work, and it is difficult to imagine how it could have been otherwise. Soon after he was born, in war-torn Lvov in 1945, his native city was ceded to Soviet Ukraine. Like Herbert, also from Lvov, Zagajewski discovered the unfortunate possibility of living in exile within one's native land. The same longing he expressed in the question 'why must every city/become Jerusalem and every man a Jew'--from 'To Go to Lvov, ' a classic early poem--becomes a declaration of the poet's own changes in 'Star.'"--Benjamin Paloff, "The Nation"
"As his reader might expect, "Eternal Enemies" contains poems capturing evanescent moments of being deftly and economically rendered, several astute travel poems, moving evocations of Krakow, and some sensitively recorded responses to art and those who make it. For example, there is a penetrating portrait of Joseph Brodsky titled 'Subject: Brodsky, ' the subject one that Zagajewski has treated before. But the presentation here is original, cast somewhat in the official mode of a KGB report, one that gradually softens into eulogy and concludes with an evocation of '. . . something like tenderness, / the almost timid smile, / the momentary doubt, the hesitation, / the tiny pause in flawless arguments.' The American scene rarely and only fleetingly entered Zagajewski's viewfinder in earlier collections, but it does so now in the poem 'Traveling by Train Along the Hudson, ' and it slips in several other poems as well, including the volume's final poem, 'Antennas in the Rain.' This test is something of an experiment, composed of disjunctive statements or sentence fragments i
