Description
Book SynopsisFiedorczuk was inspired by her readings of the original Hebrew Psalms, as well as by the process of learning to sing. In her poems she captures the heartache and joy of the Biblical Psalms, but in the context of modern life.
Trade Review“A poet’s job is to write,” says Julia Fiedorczuk in the closing poem of
Psalms, runner-up for the inaugural Wisconsin Prize for Poetry in Translation. But she far surpasses that modest goal: this volume sings. Bill Johnston captures the rhythm, the cadence, and the music of Fiedorczuk’s poems for English-language readers. “Fiedorczuk is, deservingly, an international literary star who writes distinctively across genres. In this innovative, formally restless collection, the divine and bacterial, children and rivers, war and eros mix—kaleidoscopically—in unsettling poems that serve as hymns to the sacrality of life—all life, even the life of rocks. Somehow, I don’t know how, Johnston’s translation catches the music, the vowel rhyme, the staggered, restless phrasings of the originals, and Fiedorczuk’s poignant, broken tones of supplication and gratitude.”—Forrest Gander
Table of Contents
- Krajobraz z dziewczynką / Landscape with Little Girl
- Świeto grudnia / Feast of December
- Psalm I
- Psalm II
- Psalm III
- Psalm IV
- Psalm V
- Psalm VI
- Psalm VII
- Psalm VIII
- Psalm X
- Psalm XI
- Psalm XII
- Psalm XIII
- Psalm XV
- Psalm XVII
- Psalm XVIII
- Psalm XIX
- Psalm XXII
- Psalm XXIV
- Psalm XXV
- Psalm XXVII
- Psalm XXVIII
- Psalm XXIX
- Psalm XXX
- Psalm XXXI
- Psalm XXXIII
- Psalm XXXIV
- Psalm XXXVIII
- Psalm XXXIX
- Psalm XCI
- Psalm XCII
- przejściowo / for now
- [z wnętrza cielesnej pojedynczości / From within my bodily singularity]
- po drodze / on the journey
- Pogoda / Weather
- Poezja natury / Nature Poetry
- Cold
- Acknowledgments
- About Psalms
