Without End: New and Selected Poems

Description:

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."

Brief description: Adam Zagajewski (1945-2021) was born in Lvov, Poland. His books include Tremor; Canvas; Mysticism for Beginners; Without End; Eternal Enemies; Unseen Hand; Asymmetry; Solidarity, Solitude; Two Cities; Another Beauty; A Defense of Ardor; and Slight Exaggeration--all published by FSG. He lived in Chicago and Kraków.

Review Quotes:

"[Zagajewski's poems] transport us into a realm that is majestic, boundless and unknown." --Edward Hirsch, The Washington Post Book World

"Poems [that] celebrate those rare moments when we catch a glimpse of a world from which all labels have been unpeeled." --Charles Simic, The New York Review of Books