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Without End: New and Selected Poems » (First Edition)

Book cover image of Without End: New and Selected Poems by Adam Zagajewski

Authors: Adam Zagajewski, Clare Cavanagh (Translator), C. K. Williams
ISBN-13: 9780374528614, ISBN-10: 0374528616
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Date Published: March 2003
Edition: First Edition

Author Biography: Adam Zagajewski

Adam Zagajewski was born in Lvov, Poland, in 1945. He lives in Kraków and spends part of the year in Houston, where he teaches at the University of Houston.

Book Synopsis

I love to swim in the sea, which keeps

talking to itself

in the monotone of a vagabond

who no longer recalls

exactly how long he’s been on the road.

Swimming is like prayer:

palms join and part,

join and part,

almost without end.

—from "On Swimming"

Without End draws from each of Adam Zagajewski's English-language collections, both in and out of print—Tremor, Canvas, and Mysticism for Beginners—and features new work that is among his most refreshing and rewarding. These poems, lucidly translated, share the vocation that allows us, in Zagajewski's words, "to experience astonishment and to stop still in that astonishment for a long moment or two."

Joseph Brodsky

Seldom has the muse . . . spoken to anyone with such clarity and urgency as in Zagajewski s case.

NEW POEMS (translated by Clare Cavanagh)
To See	3
The Soul	5
Farewell for Zbigniew Herbert	6
The Early Hours	8
Senza Flash	9
Circus	10
Europe Goes to Sleep	11
A Flame	12
Apartment for Scholars	13
Stary Sacz	14
Bakery	15
Summer's Fullness	16
Castle	17
Dead Sparrow	18
My Aunts	19
The Churches of France	20
Where the Breath Is	22
Speak Softly	23
Line Four	25
Georges Seurat: Factory	26
The Polish Biographical Dictionary in a Library in Houston	27
Just Children	29
A Morning in Vicenza	30
Europe in Winter	31
Death of a Pianist	32
December	33
Vaporetto	34
Opus Posthumous	36
Twenty-five Years	38
How Clowns Go	39
How High the Moon	40
Tarbes	42
Little Waltz	43
Sunrise over Cassis	44
1969	45
The World's Prose	46
A King	47
Smoke	49
Lindens	50
Separation	51
Treatise on Emptiness	52
Sénanque	53
Barbarians	54
For You	55
Ancient History	56
For Gabriela Münter	57
Square d'Orléans	58
Try to Praise the Mutilated World	60
EARLY POEMS (1970-1975) (translated by Clare Cavanagh)
The Name Edmund	63
The Epicure from My Staircase	64
Tongue	65
Truth	66
New World	67
How Does the Man Look Who's Right	72
Twenty-Year-Old Soldiers	73
Philosophers	74
Immortality	75
FROM TREMOR (1985) (translated by Renata Gorczynski)
To Go to Lvov	79
A Wanderer	82
Ode to Softness	83
Late Beethoven	84
Schopenhauer's Crying	86
Fever	87
Kierkegaard on Hegel	88
We Know Everything	89
In the Trees	90
A River	92
He Acts	93
Life Sentence	94
Ode to Plurality	95
Good Friday in the Tunnels of the Métro	98
Van Gogh's Face	99
In May	100
Fire	101
Fire, Fire	102
The Self	103
Lightning	104
A View of Delft	105
To	106
It Comes to a Standstill	107
In the Past	108
The Dark God, the Light God	109
Don't Allow the Lucid Moment to Dissolve	110
That Force	111
Song of an Emigré	112
Franz Schubert: A Press Conference	113
Escalator (translated by Clare Cavanagh)	116
There Will Be a Future	118
Without End	119
In the Encyclopedias, No Room for Osip Mandelstam	120
The Generation	121
Three Voices	123
Esprit d'escalier	124
In the Beauty Created by Others	127
Over America	128
Iron	129
Palm Sunday	131
Reading Books	132
Poems on Poland	133
City Unknown	134
The Trial	135
My Masters	136
Sad, Tired	137
Your Telephone Call	138
This	139
A View of Krakow (translated by Clare Cavanagh)	140
Moment	143
FROM CANVAS (1991) (translated by Renata Gorczynski,
Benjamin Ivry, and C. K	Williams)
Lullaby	147
Anecdote of Rain	149
Lava	150
R. Says	152
Incorporeal Ruler	153
A Talk with Friedrich Nietzsche	154
Sails	156
At Daybreak	157
The Creation of the World	158
Morandi	160
Covenant	161
Presence	163
Russia Comes into Poland	164
Late Feast	167
Anton Bruckner	168
Night	170
Elegy for the Living	171
Burgundy's Grasslands	172
Electric Elegy	173
September Afternoon in the Abandoned Barracks	175
Matches	176
The Gothic	177
Password	180
The Blackened River	181
Moths	182
Vacation	183
Watching Shoah in a Hotel Room in America	184
A Fence. Chestnut Trees	186
At Midnight	187
To Myself, in an Album	188
Autumn	189
The Bells	191
The Close of Summer	192
Apes	193
In Strange Cities	194
Seventeen	195
Without Form	196
Moses	198
The Light of Lamps	199
Wind at Night	200
Wild Cherries	201
Islands and Towers	202
A History of Solitude	203
From the Lives of Things	204
Cruel	205
Simone Weil Watches the Rhône Valley	207
Fruit	208
Canvas	209
FROM MYSTICISM FOR BEGINNERS (1997) (translated by Clare Cavanagh)
A Quick Poem	213
Transformation	214
September	215
Mysticism for Beginners	217
The Three Kings	218
The Greenhouse	220
Dutch Painters	222
Postcards	224
Shell	225
The Thirties	226
Referendum	227
Refugees	228
Letter from a Reader	230
I Wasn't in This Poem	232
For M	233
That's Sicily	235
You Are My Silent Brethren	236
Out Walking	237
Vermeer's Little Girl	238
Tierra del Fuego	239
Albi	241
Self-Portrait	243
December Wind	245
Traveler	246
The House	247
Moment	248
Blackbird	249
Elegy	250
Cello	252
Degas: The Milliner's Shop	253
Planetarium	254
She Wrote in Darkness	255
Airport in Amsterdam	256
Night	258
Long Afternoons	259
To My Older Brother	260
The City Where I Want to Live	261
Persephone	262
The Room I Work In	263
Three Angels	265
From Memory	268
Summer	270
Chinese Poem	271
Holy Saturday in Paris	272
On Swimming	273
Sisters of Mercy	274
Houston, 6 p.m	276
I Walked Through the Medieval Town	278
Index of Titles	279

Subjects

Poetry

Eastern European Poetry

Polish poetry -> Translations into English
Fiction Books & Literature