Kiedy Mowisz - When You Say by Jan Twardowski (Polish Edition) (RB578)

Published 2000: First Edition / Hardcover / Excellent Condition / Polish Text

Original beige cloth with green titles on the cover and spine and original pictorial dust jacket. 160 as new very clean and bright pages. Slight shelf wear on dust jacket. (RB578)

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Kiedy mówisz - When You Say
Jan Twardowski

Translators:
Stanislad Baranczak
Clare Cavagnah
Zovia Blaszczyh
Myrna Garanis
Malgorzata Koraszewska
Sarah Lawson
Anna Mioduchowska
Maya Peretz

This is the second collection of poetry by Jan Twardowski that I have been able to track down in English. And I believe there are only the two. Which after reading these two I consider a great pity. I picked up these volumes for a few reasons. First Jan’s grandniece recommended his poetry to me. She is the confirmation sponsor of my oldest daughter. Second our parish has been staffed by Polish Pallottine Fathers and I want to pass a copy of the book on to our priest. Third just from the bit I gleamed about Father Twardowski trying to track down some of his work in English was inspiring. And finally because the first volume I read, Serious Angel, was an excellent read. I wish more of his works were available in translation. This book was according to the publishers site, has been through at least 4 editions and printings. And I am very thankful I was able to track one down. The description of this volume is:

“A selection of the poems of Father Jan Twardowski, a creator of religious poetry full of spiritual order and simplicity, valued by readers.

Selection of poems by father Jan Twardowski, a poet admired for his spiritual peace and simplicity of his religious poetry.”

The authors note at the end of the volume states:

“I sometimes ask myself these three questions: Who am I writing? To Whom am I writing? What do I think of my own poetry?

I do not keep a journal. My experiences, emotions, meetings with the world and with people are recorded in my poems.

Poems are a kind of conversation, in which the author is trying to convey some of his personal experience of the world. I am writing as if I were speaking to a close friend – for me, a poem is an attempt to get to in touch with another person. I would like to get through to everybody out there, and I am pleased that my poems are also appreciated by people living outside the Polish sphere, who understand them through their own language.

As a priest, I live in two different worlds at a time – in the external one, which the media present as contaminated, false, grisly and governed by human sin, and in the internal one, which is defined by people’s confessions and avowals. I know that a man who parts company with God is in torment. Both believers and non-believers have a cross to bear.

I constantly strive to write better. In Today’s world, we constantly come across work, often by the most renowned minds of our time, which is contaminated with despair, with relativism, with lack of faith, with materialism, with postmodernism. In this world, a religious poem might seem weak, too muffled. Yet the unheeded readers are out there, those who are looking for hope, truth, authenticity, and do not follow the day’s fashions. I am trying to speak faith in this world devoid of love.

Poems redeem that which has been trampled upon. They contribute what is human and heartfelt to a computerised, technicised world, what has not been contaminated by hatred, envy, and bickering. Poems bring along orderliness and harmony. They purify today’s reality.

There is a lack of religious poems today, and that need is revealed by the very fact that it has been suggested to publish some of them.

I do not like to provide ready interpretations of my writing, and leave the judgement to the reader. The selection proposed in this volume is and excursion through the redeemed world of mine, in which suffering need not be a misfortune, but rather a test of faithfulness towards a mystery, and death is an encounter with God, who is love.”

This volume is an excellent collection of 71 poems, of which only 7 had previously been published in English. I read through this collection over a few mugs of coffee. A couple of times I thought about some of the poems I read previously in Serious Angel, and one in particular struck me because of the great differences in translation between the two versions:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5633925-kiedy-m-wisz-when-you-say