A Couple of Poor, Polish-Speaking Romanians by Dorota Masłowska, Lisa Goldman, Paul Sirett

Abstract

w > w 2 w CSS w H 1-1 Q O 11111111111111.1111 Neruda, the lone foreigner). At their best, some of these chapters do man age to convey what birders call the jizz (gist) of a particular poet's atti tude toward nature. The discussion of Stanley Kunitz, forexample, skill fullyweaves the poet's biography, historical situation, formal habits, and thematic preoccupations into an alluring whole, and one feels compelled to go looking again for his poems in the wild. The complexi ties of Frost and Williams, who are each given two chapters, are also effectively conveyed, as are those of a half-dozen others. For the bal ance, however, Felstiner's digres sive, indulgent, and critically very conservative approach impedes his ability to give diagnostic descrip tionsofpoets or even tooffer memo rable local readings of poems. His preferred method of commentary involves surprisingly superficial remarkson alliteration ("those /and v- and r-sounds cascade through 'leaps from lava,' then 'riverward over rock / reverberating ..."') and meter ("falling rhythms . . . sink us in the poet's turf, where landscape presses on memory"). Although every one of the chapters touch es on nature or the environment in some small way, often the con nection is tenuous. In some cases, Felstiner strains our credulity by including poets rarely considered for theirattentiveness to thenatural world (George Oppen and Edna St. Vincent Millay, for example) while leaving out much more significant figures (Charles Olson, Wendell Berry, Robert Hass, et al). The unac countable principle of selection here, combined with the sometimes tele graphic structure of the text, leads one to suspect that thebook began lifeas lecturenotes foran introduc tory survey of poetry at Stanford, where Felstiner teaches. Whatever the case, there is a real question about who theappropriate audience llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll for thisvolume might be. Students of literature will findbetter fodder in any of the standard anthologies of modern poetry or nature poetry. The general readerwill no doubt be flummoxed by needless and unex plained allusions to marginal figures (ChristopherSmart has a number of cameos). And literaryscholars will find little here but theconjunction of an outdated criticalmethod with a shallow brand of environmentalism. Michael Ziser UniversityofCalifornia, Davis Dorota Mastowska. A Couple of Poor, Polish-Speaking Romanians. Lisa Goldman & Paul Sirett,trs. Lon don. Oberon (Perseus, distr.). 2008. 64 pages. ?8.99/$ 18.95. isbn 978-1 84002-846-1 For someone born in 1983, Polish writer Dorota Maslowska has com piled an extensive list of achieve ments. Her firstnovel detailing the anomie of marginalized small-town youth was Snow White and Rus sian Red (2002). Itbecame a talking point in a country still agonizing over whether capitalism or social ism wreaks greater social harm. Her second book, capturing the rhythm of a rap poem, was The Queen's Pea cock/Spew (wordplay on the Polish noun paw). Itwas awarded the nike, Poland's top literaryprize, in 2006, a year afterpublication. That same year her firstplay was published, which was subsequently staged in London. It is now available in the Oberon Modern Plays series. The play follows two grubby characters, Parcha and Dzina, as they hitchhike across Poland. They tell the driverswho pick them up that they are fromRomania?a conduit forinviting outrageously disparaging remarksabout the"otherEurope" that liesbeyond theEuropean Union's cul turalcurtain.But is thevulgar couple reallyRomanian, or a pair ofdrunken llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllltlllllllllllllllllllllllllll declasse Poles? Reaching a breaking ^^^H point, Parcha confesses: "I've been pretending to be a Polish-speaking Romanian and describing theharm- ^^^H ful effectsof eating scraps ofmeat, but suddenly it turns out that I'm ^^^H a drugged-up Pole on a comedown ^^^H . . .and Iwake up in some kind of ^^^B field, in some fucking blackcurrant patch inEast Bumblefuck on thebor derwith Kazakhstan." ^^^H In the book's foreword,Mas- ^^^B lowska calls Romania not a country ^^^H but "a state of social weightless- ^^^H ness, when suddenly all costumes, ^^^H props, ideas, definitions and honor- ^^^H arydecorations become unverified." ^^^H She adds thatinwritingtheplay ^^^H she learned about her own identity, ^^^H which, she concluded, was based ^^^H on negation?of what nationalities ^^^H she isnot. This prism is found in all ^^^H her major works, though her 2008 ^^^H novelMiedzy namidobrzejest (Things...