"I've not been without fault since I started writing in Polish"
Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki (born 1962) is a Polish poet. I picked up his Peregrinary, translated by Bill Johnston, at AWP, together with two other books by living Polish poets. I don't know much about the history of Poland but the country seems to possess the knack of throwing up gifted poets. Dycki, as the translator informs us that even Polish readers call him in short, is nothing at all like Zbigniew Herbert or Wisława Szymborska. He is himself. Maybe because he came from the border near Ukraine, from a town that mixes its tongues, before he moved to Warsaw, the literary and political capital. Maybe because he is bisexual. There is more anguish here, more tussling with death, than in the Polish poetries that I've read before.
He writes short lyrics. Here's a complete poem, from his first book Nenia and Other Poems (1990), published at the age of 28:
the women I spent nights with did not hide the fact
that they spent nights with me and they were not ashamed
when the dawn found us naked on both sides of time
the women desired to hold back that time
and remember past time as they would a child
who fell from their loins and died at once
the men I spent nights with did not hide the fact
that they spent time alongside this child
The conceit is clear and it ramifies endlessly. Dycki's openings are strong: "schizophrenia is a house
of God...." His humor is dark: "it is my favorite occupation summoning the dead."
The same poem ends with this horrifying image:
and it is easier to be a warmed skeleton
than a vast body overgrown with terrified flesh
that choking on itself goes directly to heaven
He's self-accusing here too, in the ending of a poem titled "Wellspring": "I've not been/ without fault since I started writing in Polish." That is a motto I will claim for myself.
He makes fun of himself in a half-boast. The opening of "Song of the Hopeless Situation":
I'll tell you about death in my imperfect
tongue renowned for its imperfection
He makes metaphors out of common actions. Writing in "Addressee" about his mother who is dying in the room next to where he writes:
one of these days I'll touch on the meaning
of her time in Chicago in the unlit
room upstairs from which thinking
of our needs she sends dollars and packages
The freshness of his forms, created out of the standard three quatrains. To conclude with another complete poem:
death is behind us like springtime rain
and before us like rain in the autumn
before us and behind us the same youthful
drizzling rain that sometimes acts the girl
and sometimes the boy death never leaves us
it's like autumn rain in which we take cover
though there's no shelter that is as cold
aside from the one in which we stay
I tell you death is like springtime rain
that knows too much about two student hikers
yet took them under its own protection
and acts now like a girl now like a boy
He writes short lyrics. Here's a complete poem, from his first book Nenia and Other Poems (1990), published at the age of 28:
the women I spent nights with did not hide the fact
that they spent nights with me and they were not ashamed
when the dawn found us naked on both sides of time
the women desired to hold back that time
and remember past time as they would a child
who fell from their loins and died at once
the men I spent nights with did not hide the fact
that they spent time alongside this child
The conceit is clear and it ramifies endlessly. Dycki's openings are strong: "schizophrenia is a house
of God...." His humor is dark: "it is my favorite occupation summoning the dead."
The same poem ends with this horrifying image:
and it is easier to be a warmed skeleton
than a vast body overgrown with terrified flesh
that choking on itself goes directly to heaven
He's self-accusing here too, in the ending of a poem titled "Wellspring": "I've not been/ without fault since I started writing in Polish." That is a motto I will claim for myself.
He makes fun of himself in a half-boast. The opening of "Song of the Hopeless Situation":
I'll tell you about death in my imperfect
tongue renowned for its imperfection
He makes metaphors out of common actions. Writing in "Addressee" about his mother who is dying in the room next to where he writes:
one of these days I'll touch on the meaning
of her time in Chicago in the unlit
room upstairs from which thinking
of our needs she sends dollars and packages
The freshness of his forms, created out of the standard three quatrains. To conclude with another complete poem:
death is behind us like springtime rain
and before us like rain in the autumn
before us and behind us the same youthful
drizzling rain that sometimes acts the girl
and sometimes the boy death never leaves us
it's like autumn rain in which we take cover
though there's no shelter that is as cold
aside from the one in which we stay
I tell you death is like springtime rain
that knows too much about two student hikers
yet took them under its own protection
and acts now like a girl now like a boy
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