New Poems » (Bilingual)

Born in 1921, Rozewicz started writing poetry during his time fighting in the Home Army, the Polish resistnace movement in the World War II. He soon came to be recognized as one of the most important Polish writers of his generation. Rozewicz continues to write and publish, and his work has been translated into many languages. Johnston is Director of the Polish Studies Center at Indiana University. His translations include Gustaw Herling's The Noonday Cemetery and Other Stories (New Directions, 2003), Jerzy Pilch's His Current Woman (Grove, 2002), and Stefan Zeromski's The Faithful River (Northwestern, 1999). In 2005, he won an ASTEEL translation prize for Tulli's Dreams and Stones.

“The startling juxtaposition of sensual and brutal histories, of human and animal flesh, of the experience of war and of writing is Rózewicz’s great achievement throughout twenty volumes of poetry.”—Guardian

From the earliest days of his poetic career, Tadeusz Rózewicz found a unique, pared-down style that consciously avoided metaphor and sought a new, painfully clear voice in which to express the horrors of wartime experiences. His work was immediately recognized as new and vital in Polish poetry, and he came to be regarded as one of the most important writers of his generation. New Poems is a collection of Rózewicz’s three latest volumes in their entirety: exit (1998), the professor’s knife (2001), and gray zone (2002).

Barbara Hoffert - Library Journal

Polish poetry isn't just Zbigniew Herbert and Wislawa Szymborska, as evidenced by this compendium of three recent volumes by Rozewicz. Concise yet fluid-the poems simply cascade down the page-and utterly contemporary in tone even while embracing the dark history of the 20th century, this book is a real find for poetry lovers.