Scattering the Dark: An Anthology of Polish Women Poets by Karen Kovacik

Abstract

but instead supports the transformational elements of Loynaz’s work. His approach reinforces the remarkable fluidity of her phrasings, which have a refractive nature, giving rise to multiple potential translations, each with subtle metaphysical shadings. The final section, Melancolia de otoño (Autumn melancholy), moves with a neoplatonic fervency that observes changes in the beloved, not simply within or in elements of nature. The result is satisfying and triggers self-reflection. Susan Smith Nash University of Oklahoma Scattering the Dark: An Anthology of Polish Women Poets. Ed. Karen Kovacik. Buffalo, New York. White Pine Press. 2016. 246 pages. It was not until Wisława Szymborska won the Nobel Prize in 1996 that Polish women poets began to achieve national as well as international visibility. According to Karen Kovacik, Poland’s top literary prizes had always gone to men, so the Swedish Academy ’s decision took the Polish male literary establishment by surprise, some even suggesting that it should have gone instead to the leading male poet, Zbigniew Herbert. Kovacik has set out to overturn the traditional gender imbalance inherent in Polish literary and artistic culture by assembling the translated poems of thirty-one Polish women poets in a thematic volume with subjects ranging from history and mythology to dreams, ars poetica, and domesticity. What is energizing about this collection is its introduction of so many new, vibrant voices, though the momentum is undermined by the constraint of the thematic arrangement, which inhibits the reader’s impulse to contrast and savor individual poetic styles. The boldly ironic tone and subversive, experimental spirit that enlivens this collection suggest the sense of liberation that Polish writers of both genders have felt since the fall of communism in 1989. Yet the awareness of past suffering is never far below the surface: “I’ve made room for death in my life, / peeled back the sheets and my shirt, unlocked my rib cage,” declares the speaker of Justyna Bargielska ’s “Translation.” And a short poem by Julia Hartwig is memorably composed of a conversation between women seated around the table of a café as they enumerate the torments they endured during wartime, each new addition worse than the last—Hartwig closes her poem with the wry summary statement, “Some ordinary women from Warsaw.” The majestic ease with metaphor that is the hallmark of Poland’s greatest poets is apparent throughout this anthology. The speaker of Ewa Parma’s “Old Woman Poet” notes that women poets do better in old age than male poets: “rather than standing over the abyss, you nestle into it.” And Agnieszka Kuciak’s “Wroniecka Street Pool” portrays a boy in a pool brimming with ghosts from the concentration camps; he finds comfort in the imagined voice of his mother, who likens the act of swimming to praying: “Swimming, we keep folding and opening our palms / As if in prayer, like when we say the psalms.” Rita Signorelli-Pappas Princeton, New Jersey Mahtem Shiferraw. Fuchsia. Lincoln. University of Nebraska Press. 2016. 83 pages. The futility of rage in the face of violence is among the many threads running through Fuchsia, winner of the 2016 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets. The physicality of Ethiopian-native Mahtem Shiferraw’s imagery in her central poem, “How to Peel Cactus Fruit,” viscerally communicates how trauma overwhelms even the quotidian. “The poem resides in me thus: a cold lump Annika Milisic-Stanley The Disobedient Wife Cinnamon Press Told from the perspectives of two women in Tajikistan, one a maid and the other her rich employer, The Disobedient Wife is a novel about social and cultural convergence. Annika Milisic-Stanley’s sprawling descriptions serve as a linguistic mirror for the unraveling of both women’s lives. As dysfunctional relationships threaten them and violent extremism threatens their country, these women must draw strength from each other, different though they may be. Lisa McInerney The Glorious Heresies Tim Duggan Books This winding tale of working-class Irish lives balances wicked humor and dark realism to sketch out the many ties that bind its five protagonists. With her unflinching view of a shrinking middle class in decline, Lisa McInerney positions herself as the voice of a new generation of Irish...