Anna Frajlich's poetry flows in its own rhythm, independent of fashionable topics and formal experiments. It consistently expresses the poet's life experience, journeys and returns being the main current of the poetic stream.The title of her latest volume, W pośpiechu rzeka płynie [Like a rushing river], highlights the core of Frajlich's poetic world—the stream of life recorded in poetic scenes and visions. The volume reiterates motifs that have always been present in her poetry, such as the passing of time, real and mythical returns to (un)known places, the search for memory and identity, experiences of reading and writing, death, and love.The volume, divided into four sections, is far from symmetrical. The first section, entitled “Odjazdy, powroty, pamięć” [Departures, returns, memory], contains almost half of the volume's fifty-one poems, while the two middle sections, “A jednak jeszcze czytają” [And yet they are still reading] and “Szukanie klucza” [Looking for the key], are made up of about a dozen poems each, and the last section, “Snem wiecznym żyć” [To live with the eternal dream], has only five.Being the most concise, the last section is the most poignant. It rewrites traditional topoi (death as a dream), genres such as tombstone inscriptions (“Nagrobek” [Tombstone]), and motifs such as “Złota jesień” [Indian summer], which evokes the proverbial golden Polish autumn. It also includes an intertextual monologue with her great female poetic predecessor (and friend) Wisława Szymborska. Evoking Szymborska's famous poem “Rozmowa z kamieniem” [Conversation with a stone], the speaker of the poem, an alter ego of the poet herself, asks about the afterlife, about the doors knocked at and the rooms walked through now, after death. Another poem by Szymborska, a poem describing death as emptiness—“Kot w pustym mieszkaniu” [The Cat in an empty flat]—is also alluded to, but no answers are given, which is a common feature of many of Frajlich's poems.The last poem of the volume, “Pył” [Dust] is a poem on death written by an immigrant who has always reflected on her own place on earth. In an earlier poem on death in a foreign land entitled “Tanatos i Eros” [Thanatos and Eros], Frajlich depicted an imagined dying as a falling in love. The speaker of that poem says: ziemię wchłonę swoim ciałem / tak jak gdybym pokochała . . . (my body will soak up the earth / as if I came to love it . . . ), which is repeated in the final affirmative distich.1 In the original the repeated sentence has no object, which makes the falling in love sound like a metaphor of coming to love the earth into which one has been tossed by fate. In the new poem, the speaking “we” are slowly growing into the new land with their graves, leaving only dust in the places they had lived before. The color of this dust —golden—evokes the motherland, the never really abandoned land.The return to the land of childhood is one of the leitmotifs of the volume. And it is also “the return to the unknown” as the opening poem—“Powrót w nieznane” [Return to the unknown]—oxymoronically announces. The exotic Biszkek (Bishkek) evokes the Mother of the poet who gave her life in the shadow of the Kyrgyz mountains. Frajlich's recent visit there (in 2014, as the date below the poem informs) comes across as much as a poetic quest for the traces of the Mother and her pain as a quest for the meaning of life which flows hurriedly like a river. In the next poem, “Jak najdalej” [As far as possible] the Mother's escape from war and Holocaust is compared to the escape of the poet and her husband from communist Poland, whose rulers put all blame on Jewish members of the communist party and pushed Jewish citizens into exile in 1968.“As far as possible from Europe,” as Władek is quoted in the poem as saying, and they set off, like the Mother did before, not to return to the town of atrocities. The 1975 poem “Wyjazd” [Departure], found in 2017 according to a note by the author, describes the atmosphere of this departure with “a longing dying on the way.” The new land, marked by “foreign-language silence” (obcojęzyczna cisza), appears as the land of disinheritance, not only from the motherland but also from habits and rituals. The final lines of the following poem entitled “Seder” (Passover Seder, another poem from the 1970s) reads: w tę noc kielich stawiamy / napełniony winem / —prorok do innych spiesząc / nasze drzwi omija (11) (this night we put up a glass / filled with wine / —the prophet hurrying to others / misses our door).The first four poems in the volume all contain leading motifs in Frajlich's poetry, and they are all representative of her poetics: simple, almost prosaic, sometimes witty and epigrammatic but rather sparing in poetic means, with rhetorical questions, repetitions and rare, usually slant rhymes, are most frequently applied. Her poems often have a narrative structure and sometimes create scenes on which real and literary characters play their roles. One poem in this first section is entitled “Emigracja” [Emigration] and dedicated to the poet's parents. The poem has a motto from the famous Yiddish Kraków poet and songwriter Mordechaj Gebirtig (1877–1943): Gore bracia, gore, płonie nasze miasteczko (It's burning, brothers, it's burning, our little town is on fire). Here the reader finds herself in the middle of a shtetł—nasze małe miasteczko (our little town), as the poem reads—among its inhabitants who are crying, with the words of Gebirtig's song, S'brent.Although the fire is not seen anywhere, it has become difficult for the inhabitants “to brush off the bitter ash from one's heart” (otrzepać serce z gorzkiego popiołu). Remembering pogroms and the Holocaust they begin to leave, called on by another literary voice (of Tevye the Dairyman): trzeba już jechać (it's time to go), and by a son of a Cantor adding the direction—“to America.” Thus the poet's individual story is inscribed into a larger context: indirectly in this poem, and directly in the poem on the neighboring page entitled “Matki mojej ojciec (a fragment)” [My mother's father (an excerpt)]. There the big city appears—Lwów (Lviv), to which the grandfather returns after the Great War (World War I) only to find his wife dying of hunger in the times of the city's “small wars.” There is a reference here to “Hymn o łyżce zupy” [A Hymn on a spoon of soup, 1920] by Józef Wittlin (1896–1976, in exile from 1943), composed in the same city at the same time, emphasizing the severity of the mortal hunger.Still, all these memories and visions of the past are not supposed to bring the past back. Bygone is bygone: nobody wants “to board a carriage with a suitcase full of pain and bitter secrets for the second time” (po raz drugi / do wagonu wsiadać / z walizką pełną bólu / I gorzkich tajemnic [17]). Our fate, as the poem “Traktem niepamięci” [On the road of oblivion] further convinces the reader, is to go on: “ahead on the road of oblivion.”Although memory is questioned many times in the poems—“Memory first / goes into the grave” (pamięć pierwsza / schodzi do grobu [23])—and the returns may bring disappointment with a life “knocking the keys out of our hands” (wytrącając nam z ręki [. . .] klucze [25]), the need to look into the past as into the mirror keeps coming back in Frajlich's poems. A poem entitled “Czas” [Time] directly calls for such returns in its first stanza, built on repetitions: Czas najwyższyIt's high timeŻeby znaleźćczas To find timeNa powrót do czasuFor a return to timeKiedy czasWhen timeDawali za darmo (p. 24)Was given free of charge. (p. 24)One of the most important vehicles of these returns is language itself—from children's rhymes, reminiscent of the childhood's backyard, through Polish titles, sayings, and quotations. Language is also a basic tool of naming and understanding the world around, as one poem “I też płyną” [And they too are flowing] demonstrates. The lesson once taught by Father at “the western river of that country” is still valid now “at the East River of this city”: a barka (barge) and a holownik (tug) are the same, and they are also flowing (płyną). More intriguingly, language is not only language but also a lover dreamed about, as the reader learns from the poem “Miłość” [Love].Actually, the lover in this dream is the final exam in Polish, during which punctuation is given its finishing tender touches (dopieszczam interpunkcję). The exam sometimes turns into a nightmare, into “an exam without an exam,” in which nobody waits at home and the “pampered text lounges around in some file.” The first of the two final questions asked by the examinee (and the sleeper, and the poet)—co na to Freud? (41) (and what would Freud say?) —suggests that there are deeper meanings for the reader to guess. But the second question, ended by a full stop and thus not formally a question, puts the final accent on the unavoidably emotional meaning of language: I czemu miłość jest taka bezwzględna. (And why love is so ruthless [or: so absolute]2).In other poems in the volume Frajlich finds obvious partners in her loving attachment to language: the great poetic predecessors Czesław Miłosz—who travelled the countries of both “this and that world in different forms and costumes but always in the same language”3—and Szymborska, whose double-coded language with its “structures of silence and metaphors” eludes clear interpretation since the entangled reality can be perfectly expressed only in her way. And finally, and perhaps first of all, the master poet, Adam Mickiewicz, who “like a moraine / left / traces on the earth” (jak morena / ślady / zostawił na ziemi [21]). The geological simile, applied in all seriousness in the poem “Wilno Mickiewicza” [Mickiewicz's Wilno], can sound a little bit ironic, which is perhaps unintended.A reference to Mickiewicz and the romantic and classical tradition also appears in Frajlich's poem dedicated to the poet and scholar Leszek Szaruga. Making use of the Polish saying niedaleko pada jabłko od jabłoni (“an apple does not fall far away from an apple tree,” an equivalent of the English “like father, like son”), the poem ends with a quotation from Mickiewicz's epic Pan Tadeusz [Master Thaddeus]. There the eponymous young hero famously says to his eager older lover: “kochajmy się, ale tak—z osobna” (let's love each other, but—separately). The words have a comic effect in the plot of the epic since it is clear that Tadeusz is trapped between an old enchantment and a new love and is eager to wriggle himself out of his former obligations. In Frajlich's poem, however, the words are ascribed to another hero, the Count, courted by the same woman. It is difficult to see that this change has any artistic effect—it simply looks like a mistake and tends to undermine the message of the poem—Niedaleko pada / romantyzm od klasycyzmu (romanticism does not fall far away from classicism).Indeed, classical genres play an important role in Mickiewicz's transgressive romantic writing; as Frajlich's poem has it: Klasyczne włókna napinają zmierzwioną romantyczną sierść (37) (Classical fibers stretch out the ruffled romantic content). Yet the punch line: Kochajmy sie—rzecze Hrabia / —ale . . . tak z osobna (37) (Let's love each other—says Hrabia—but . . . separately) does not seem to make a real point. Nor does the dedication to Szaruga—“after reading his “Wypracowanie#8” [Composition #8]” (i.e., an essay in which Szaruga discusses the two poetics and their political affiliations) —make it more coherent.4 In fact, some poems on writing and reading practices in Frajlich's volume do not seem convincing. Some verge on banality, the ending of “Prawdziwe książki” [True books], a poem dedicated to passionate young readers of Mann, reads: Umarł już mały Tadzio / I wielki Tomasz Mann // Śmierć w Wenecji / wciąż żyje (32) (The little Tadzio died / and the great Thomas Mann // Death in Venice / still lives). Some are emotional records of the process of reading. In the poem “Nad wierszami Andrzeja Buszy” [Over Andrzej Busza's poems], an almost prosaic reflection in the first stanza on Busza's sadness and the inconceivability of Busza's poem is followed up in the second stanza with the reader's/poet's helplessness at absorbing it. Yet the concise introduction to the second stanza, in which an antithetical parallelism, an engrossing metaphor and slant rhymes successfully build emotional tension: A to nie mogłamAnd then I couldn'tczegoś znaleźćfind anythingi nie umiałamand couldn'tczegoś zgubićlose anythingrama wisiała bez obrazuthe frame was hanging without a picturetwój wiersz czytałamyour poem I was readingo Łazarzu (p. 35)about Lazarus (p. 35)does not find a meaningful resolution. The rest of the stanza lowers the tone of the poem and slips into a commonsense conclusion: Mówiłeś potem o baptystach / zbłąkanych // ale kto nie błądzi (And then you were talking about Baptists / errant // but who does not err), as if Busza's modern version of Lazarus's insecure resurrection (“Łazarz” [Lazarus]) caused anxiety which could not be matched.5 Another poem in the same section, “Z dziennika lektury” [From a reading diary], dedicated to the reading of Szaruga's book of essays,6 also expresses helplessness born out of reading and futile efforts to find answers. But this poem has a more intriguing point: budzę się twarzą do drzwi, / albo / twarzą do okna. // Gdzie jest wyjście? (38) (I wake up facing the door, / or / facing the window // Where is an exit?).There are also some metaliterary poems in Frajlich's volume in which the answer comes in an instant, for example “Pod brązem jest tylko brąz” [There is only bronze under bronze], dedicated to the mid-war Polish writer Tadeusz Boy Żeleński. His endless efforts at demythologizations (called by him odbrązawianie [literally. un-bronzing]), had to remain futile, says Frajlich: under a bronze surface there is another bronze layer, and beneath it another one. Even if a silver mirror appeared from under all the removed layers, it would only show “a beautiful devil's face” with our own smile. Books can also appear disappointingly meaningless to the poet, as in the poem “Zakładka” [Bookmark]: the bookmark put at this or that page of the read book finally finds its place among unused bookmarks on the shelf. In the poem, repeated actions and repetitions of the title word intensify the sense of futility.The tone of senselessness and helplessness remains present in the third section of the volume. Its first, untitled poem emphasizes self-limitations and self-illusions in two parallel stanzas. The first stanza depicts a homestead which becomes a prison, the second a palace which becomes the scene of a lonely mystery. The parallel structure of the almost regular four-line stanzas, further organized by rhymes or slant rhymes, and the parallel images employed, turn the poem into an intriguing, slightly ironic epigram. The same section contains a poem which rewrites another classical genre: “Kołysanka” [Lullaby]. Dedicated to the poet's husband, the poem uses the tender wording and soft tones of traditional lullabies—onomatopoeic soft consonants (ś, ć) are prominent—but ends with an unusual conclusion: sleep is supposed to give strength for the morning's quest for “the time / that passed / the day / that faded” (tego czasu / co minął / tego dnia / który zbladł).The oneiric motif recurs in the neighboring poem, whose metaphor serves as the title of the whole section. In the poem the breathing of the sleeping beloved “wanders in the corridors and searches for the key.” The motif of walking in a dream was also employed earlier in the volume: in the first section the speaker of the poem “Po przebudzeniu” [After waking up] wandered “from door to door” in an oneiric quest for illusions. Walking in a dream also reappears in the last section, something which, together with the poem on the oneiric exam in Polish, makes it another leitmotif connecting all the parts of the book. At the end of the volume, in the poem “Senność” [Sleepiness], the oneiric wandering becomes a death wish, a longing to “wander / in eternity // to live with the eternal dream” (błądzić / w nieskończoności // snem wiecznym żyć [56]).Everyday sleep always struggles with insomnia, the speaker of another poem of the third section complains: “even a pillow / does not fall asleep trustfully / under a head” (nawet poduszka / nie zasypia już ufnie / pod głową) (“Niedokończone” [Unfinished]). Both dreams and being awake are burdened by the knowledge that life is always “up the same mountain / whose peak as the horizon line / is only an illusion” (wciąż pod tę samą górę / której szczyt jak linia horyzontu / tylko jest złudzeniem), but this knowledge also makes life meaningful. Boli mnie / więc jestem (It pains me / therefore I am) announces the speaker of the neighboring epigrammatic poem entitled “Definicja” [Definition]. The play on the classical cogito defines life by pain but is also used to create a spatial perspective in the second stanza: tu ja a tam / przestrzeń / jeszcze niedoznana [51]) (I here and there / space / not yet experienced]), with the epithet describing space (niedoznana) rhyming with a “fresh wound” (rana) accompanying pain, thus opening it up to the unknown.The third section also contains another poetic scene, the poem “Jastrzębie” [Hawks]. This poem evokes the image of majestically floating birds of prey, whose “skyward flight” contrasts with their “earthbound aim” (the original introduces a pair of contrasting but rhyming epithets: podniebny/naziemny), but it also plays on a literary tradition. The hawks’ actions are described in two short dynamic lines, framed with exact rhymes: mysz złapią / rozdrapią (52) ([they] will catch a mouse / [and] will scratch [it]). These rhymes recall the hilarious baroque rhymes of Józef Baka, SJ (1707–1770) and his dramatic world of rapid contrasts. Unfortunately, this poem contrasts with some other poems in the section that I find rather platitudinous, like “Loki” [Curls], where no intriguing observations are made (the poem refers to curls in no need of being combed), nor language employed in any revealing way. The conclusion of “Loki” seems disappointingly obvious: the curls are allowed to “dance in the rhythm of the melody / which the life played for them” (niech tańczą w imię melodii / którą zagrało im życie [48]).Some of the poems have more of the character of everyday jottings, like the poems about journeys to famous destinations, to Rome for instance. A poem entitled “Jeszcze raz Rzym” [Once again Rome] depicts the return to Rome after half a century. The poem evokes common symbols of the city (Pantheon, Bernini, Fountain [Fontana di Trevi]) and employs the common metaphor of “time flowing like water” (czas płynie tak jak woda). The poem ends with a reminder of a once promised meeting in the “famous Caffé [!] Greco”. One could say that such poems are meant to balance the heaviness of history and memory depicted in other poems of the volume. Still it seems to me that they make the voice of the poet weaker rather than lighter. Her voice sounds much more strongly in poems exploring profound life experiences, or making use of legends or myths, like in the poem on apples (“Jabłka?”). In this poem their origin is not the garden of Eden but Kazakhstan, said to once have been the only place on Earth where they grew. Horses eating them right from the trees took apples to the world in their excrement—tylko koniom cwałującym po ziemi / dziękuj w duchu // że jabłko zjadasz (40) (only to horses galloping across the earth / give thanks inwardly // that you eat an apple). The alluring legend does not need any adornments; the simplicity of the language and of the point of the poem quoted above create an endearing effect.What seems most surprising in a book of poetry written by a multicultural emigrant is the lack of intercultural intertextuality. Except for the abovementioned Yiddish poet and the Polish poets referred to earlier—and two other poets to whom particular poems are dedicated, Ryszard Krynicki and Piotr Michałowski (the latter also an editor of the series in which the book was published)—no other poets are drawn into a literary dialogue.7 It is as if the native language and the native literary tradition formed the closest and most cherished circle of references; not even the literature of Frajlich's second home finds a place. Although America is evoked many times in the volume, its literature does not find its way into Frajlich's poetry (which is also striking in her earlier collections of poems). Sometimes she even plays on the reader's expectations, as in the poem “Lubię wracać” [I like to return]. It soon becomes clear that the beginning of the poem Lubię wracać do tych samych miejsc / odkrywać Amerykę pod liściem / łopianu (I like to return to the same places / to discover America under a leaf of / burdock) refers to the Polish saying “odkrywać Amerykę”, meaning to discover something already discovered (łopian, a plant unfamiliar to America, emphasizes the true meaning of the phrase). In fact the poem once again depicts an immigrant returning to native places now abandoned by everybody, with nobody writing “an elegy or a treatise.”This remark can sound surprising in the postmodern world where so many write about their lives that it becomes a real challenge to navigate this labyrinth of more or less biographical writing and find something unique. How does Anna Frajlich mark her presence in this (re)written world? As I said at the beginning, her poems—from the first volume published in 1976 to the latest one—employ the same simple poetics and demonstrate the same wish to express the poet's own life experience in her mother tongue, the memory, the tradition, the past and the present being always revisited and reconsidered. Some poems delve deeper into the nature of language and the manners in which it can be employed, some seem to remain more on the surface, just noting impressions. Frajlich's poems do not attempt to struggle either with the world or with the words describing it. Always more ready to smile than to dramatize, her poetry flows like a river absorbing everything, and it does not seem to hurry anywhere. Rather, having meandered over the years, it now tries to flow into its final destination, into the eternal dream.