{"id":8329,"date":"2024-08-07T14:49:25","date_gmt":"2024-08-07T12:49:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/?p=8329"},"modified":"2024-08-22T11:31:14","modified_gmt":"2024-08-22T09:31:14","slug":"to-the-letter-poetry-collection-by-tomasz-rozycki","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2024\/08\/07\/to-the-letter-poetry-collection-by-tomasz-rozycki\/","title":{"rendered":"„To the Letter” Poetry Collection by Tomasz R\u00f3\u017cycki"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Published January 2024 by Archipelago Books<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frank, acute, and intimate poems of human loss, resilience, and love \u2013 a detective poem, a historical hopscotch, a love story

\u201cA truly lyrical longing for the world to be transformed.\u201d\u2014 Polish Book Institute<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

R\u00f3\u017cycki collects moments of illumination \u2013 a cat dashing out of a window and „feral sun” streaking in, a body planting itself in the ground like rhubarb and flowering. He collects and collects, opens a crack, and clutches a shrapnel of epiphany.

Tomasz R\u00f3\u017cycki’s\u00a0To the Letter\u00a0<\/em>follows Lieutenant Anielewicz on the hunt for any clues that might lead 21st century human beings out of a sense of despair. With authoritarianism rising across Eastern Europe, the Lieutenant longs for a secret hero. At first, he suspects some hidden mechanism afoot: fruit tutors him in the ways of color, he drifts out to sea to study the grammar of tides, or he gazes at the sun as it thrums away like a timepiece. In one poem, he admits „this is the story of my confusion,” and in the next the Lieutenant is back on the trail. „This lunacy needs a full investigation,” he jibes.

He wants to get to the bottom of it all, but he’s often bewitched by letters and the trickery of language. Diacritics on Polish words form a „flock of sooty flecks, clinging to letters” and Lieutenant Anielewicz studies the tails, accents, and strokes that twist this script.

While the Lieutenant can’t write a coherent code to solve life’s mysteries or to fill the absence of a country rent by war, his search for patterns throughout art, philosophy, and literature lead not to despair but to an affirmation of the importance of human love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To buy the collection, see the Amazon link below: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To the Letter: Poems eBook : Rozycki, Tomasz, Rosenthal, Mira: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or check with your preferred bookseller<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reviews<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

„In this philosophical collection that explores doubt\u2014regarding language, God, and the prospect of repeating history\u2014many poems address an unreachable \u201cyou\u201d who could be a lover, a deity, or a ghost of someone long dead. Rosenthal\u2019s translation draws out these poems\u2019 shades of melancholy and whimsy, along with the slant and irregular rhymes that contribute to their uncanny humor. R\u00f3\u017cycki\u2019s verse teems with sensuous, imaginatively rendered details.” <\/em>\u2014\u00a0The New Yorker<\/em><\/strong>

\u201cAcross the ninety-nine poems of Polish poet Tomasz R\u00f3\u017cycki\u2019s\u00a0To The Letter, presides a calling out to absence, often in the form of this \u201cyou\u201d whether in loss\u2014cultural, global, personal\u2014or self-examination . . . This collection has, perhaps, added resonance landing in 2023: \u201cYou\u2014out there where the future pushes through like a worm from an apple, only the hole is in heaven and so enormous we\u2019ll all fall in, along with tenements, convenience stores, our entire state\u2014let\u2019s say it\u2019s nowhere\u2014\u201d A notable contribution to Polish poetry available in English\u2013and a vital living voice, no less.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 Rebecca Morgan Frank,\u00a0LitHub<\/em><\/strong>

\u201cWe live in feral times,\u201d the poet says, asking us \u201cwhat shape this era will carve \/ in flesh.\u201d In Mira Rosenthal\u2019s exacting, beautiful translations, Tomasz R\u00f3\u017cycki’s work gives us a moment of honest assessment, answering hard questions without patronizing, with lyric precision. One of Poland\u2019s best living poets, he is writing at the height of his powers. Which, for me, means: there is mystery in his work, that feels trustworthy\u2014\u201cwe will dig ourselves out of our private muck \/of subtext, shed the weight,\u201d he says, \u201cand fly off, empty, for the nearest lightbulb.\u201d It is amongst the quotidian that he seeks to be saved, his is a vision in which despite all the tragedy of this new century, the thrush that sings \u201cat two a.m. outside \/our window in the parking lot has saved \/ the day, the month.\u201d If that is to be our new metaphysics, count me in.<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 Ilya Kaminsky, author of\u00a0Deaf Republic<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Dancing in Odessa<\/em><\/strong>

„The poems are intimate and wry, philosophically complex, and charged with metaphors for absence and language itself.”<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 Dana Isokawa,\u00a0Poets & Writers Magazine
<\/em><\/strong>
\u201cIrony is the spice of poetry . . . R\u00f3\u017cycki\u2019s irony can be caustic (\u201csome people are so poor the only thing they have\/is money, money\u201d), or it can be sublimely political . . . Rosenthal deserves special praise for rendering R\u00f3\u017cycki\u2019s wordplay, musical density, and metonymic dazzle into powerful English . . .\u00a0R\u00f3\u017cycki\u2019s poem as \u201crolled-up paper\/gun\u201d is a handmade, fragile, but potent technology for survival.\u201d<\/em>\u2014\u00a0<\/em>Ange Mlinko,\u00a0The New York Review of Books
<\/em><\/strong>
„The past will never leave us. It will haunt our photographs; it will speak between the words that we read and write. R\u00f3\u017cycki\u2019s collection, brought to us through Rosenthal\u2019s beautiful translation, helps us remember that it is art that will lead us through to a bearable future, and art that will always speak the unspeakable.\u201d<\/em>\u2014\u00a0Iris Dunkle,\u00a0Words Without Borders

<\/em><\/strong>„Mysterious events in Agualusa\u2019s stories reveal a kinship with Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez, whereas events of mysterious ambiguity fall into Bola\u00f1o\u2019s camp . . .\u00a0Daniel Hahn\u2019s translation successfully conveys that straight-faced equanimity needed for staring absurdities in the eyes.\u201d<\/em>\u2014\u00a0Tom Bowden,\u00a0The Book Beat
<\/em>
<\/strong>„[Mira Rosenthal\u2019s] English iterations fully relay the poems\u2019 accessibility, music, and humor\u2014as well as the ways they integrate into surprising valences with creativity, love, and interbeing . . .To the Letter\u00a0reminds\u00a0us that fragmentation offers an opportunity to listen and create, that the blank spaces between words are places in which new life may yet be lived. It reminds us that the reader is doubly alive, watching and being watched, even\u00a0from\u00a0the shadows.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 Michael Collins,\u00a0Asymptote Journal

<\/em><\/strong>„For R\u00f3\u017cycki, the void is . . . about loss\u2014whether of the place he was forced to flee, or of the life he missed out on as a consequence . . . Where poetry usually stops at anguish, R\u00f3\u017cycki goes the whole length to realize the fullness of a proxy conjured by loss, the stranger who lives on in the mind.”<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 Janani Ambikapathy,\u00a0Harriet Books\u00a0(the blog of the Poetry Foundation)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

About the Author<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

TOMASZ R\u00d3\u017bYCKI<\/strong> is the author of eleven volumes of poetry and prose. Over the last decade he has garnered almost every prize Poland has to offer as well as widespread critical acclaim, with work translated into numerous languages and frequent appearances at international festivals. In the U.S., he has been featured at the Unterberg Poetry Center, the Princeton Poetry Festival, and the Brooklyn Book Festival. His volume Colonies<\/em> (translated by Mira Rosenthal) won the Northern California Book Award and was a finalist for numerous other prizes, including the International Griffin Poetry Prize and the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize.

MIRA ROSENTHAL<\/strong> is the author of The Local World<\/em>, which won the Wick Poetry Prize. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and Stanford University\u2019s Stegner Fellowship, and her work appears regularly in such journals as Poetry, Ploughshares, Threepenny Review, Guernica, Harvard Review, New England Review, A Public Space<\/em>, and Oxford American<\/em>. Her honors include a PEN\/Heim Translation Fund Award, a Fulbright Fellowship, a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies, and residencies at Hedgebrook and MacDowell. She teaches creative writing at Cal Poly and lives on the central coast of California.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Published January 2024 by Archipelago Books Frank, acute, and intimate poems of human loss, resilience, and love \u2013 a detective poem, a historical hopscotch, a love story \u201cA truly lyrical longing for the world to be transformed.\u201d\u2014 Polish Book Institute R\u00f3\u017cycki collects moments of illumination \u2013 a cat dashing out of a window and „feral […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":8330,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[145,7,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","category-events","category-literature"],"yoast_head":"\n"To the Letter" Poetry Collection by Tomasz R\u00f3\u017cycki - Instytut Polski w Londynie<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2024\/08\/07\/to-the-letter-poetry-collection-by-tomasz-rozycki\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"pl_PL\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""To the Letter" Poetry Collection by Tomasz R\u00f3\u017cycki - Instytut Polski w Londynie\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Published January 2024 by Archipelago Books Frank, acute, and intimate poems of human loss, resilience, and love \u2013 a detective poem, a historical hopscotch, a love story \u201cA truly lyrical longing for the world to be transformed.\u201d\u2014 Polish Book Institute R\u00f3\u017cycki collects moments of illumination \u2013 a cat dashing out of a window and „feral […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2024\/08\/07\/to-the-letter-poetry-collection-by-tomasz-rozycki\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Instytut Polski w Londynie\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-08-07T12:49:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-08-22T09:31:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2024\/08\/To-the-letter.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"754\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"823\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"konopkab\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Napisane przez\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"konopkab\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Szacowany czas czytania\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"8 minut\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"event\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2024\/08\/07\/to-the-letter-poetry-collection-by-tomasz-rozycki\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2024\/08\/07\/to-the-letter-poetry-collection-by-tomasz-rozycki\/\",\"name\":\"\\\"To the Letter\\\" Poetry Collection by Tomasz R\u00f3\u017cycki\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2024\/08\/07\/to-the-letter-poetry-collection-by-tomasz-rozycki\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":[\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2024\/08\/To-the-letter.png\",\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2024\/08\/To-the-letter-275x300.png\",\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2024\/08\/To-the-letter.png\",\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2024\/08\/To-the-letter.png\"],\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2024\/08\/To-the-letter.png\",\"datePublished\":\"2024-08-07T12:49:25+02:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-08-22T09:31:14+02:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/#\/schema\/person\/650660f82290e905505348ef8ca79a33\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2024\/08\/07\/to-the-letter-poetry-collection-by-tomasz-rozycki\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"pl-PL\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2024\/08\/07\/to-the-letter-poetry-collection-by-tomasz-rozycki\/\"]}],\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"startDate\":\"2024-01-09\",\"endDate\":\"2024-01-09\",\"eventStatus\":\"EventScheduled\",\"eventAttendanceMode\":\"OfflineEventAttendanceMode\",\"location\":{\"@type\":\"place\",\"name\":\"\",\"address\":\"\",\"geo\":{\"@type\":\"GeoCoordinates\",\"latitude\":\"\",\"longitude\":\"\"}},\"description\":\"Published January 2024 by Archipelago Books\\nFrank, acute, and intimate poems of human loss, resilience, and love \u2013 a detective poem, a historical hopscotch, a love story\u201cA truly lyrical longing for the world to be transformed.\u201d\u2014 Polish Book Institute\\nR\u00f3\u017cycki collects moments of illumination \u2013 a cat dashing out of a window and \\\"feral sun\\\" streaking in, a body planting itself in the ground like rhubarb and flowering. He collects and collects, opens a crack, and clutches a shrapnel of epiphany.Tomasz R\u00f3\u017cycki's\u00a0To the Letter\u00a0follows Lieutenant Anielewicz on the hunt for any clues that might lead 21st century human beings out of a sense of despair. With authoritarianism rising across Eastern Europe, the Lieutenant longs for a secret hero. At first, he suspects some hidden mechanism afoot: fruit tutors him in the ways of color, he drifts out to sea to study the grammar of tides, or he gazes at the sun as it thrums away like a timepiece. In one poem, he admits \\\"this is the story of my confusion,\\\" and in the next the Lieutenant is back on the trail. \\\"This lunacy needs a full investigation,\\\" he jibes.He wants to get to the bottom of it all, but he's often bewitched by letters and the trickery of language. Diacritics on Polish words form a \\\"flock of sooty flecks, clinging to letters\\\" and Lieutenant Anielewicz studies the tails, accents, and strokes that twist this script.While the Lieutenant can't write a coherent code to solve life's mysteries or to fill the absence of a country rent by war, his search for patterns throughout art, philosophy, and literature lead not to despair but to an affirmation of the importance of human love.\\nTo buy the collection, see the Amazon link below: \\nTo the Letter: Poems eBook : Rozycki, Tomasz, Rosenthal, Mira: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store\\nOr check with your preferred bookseller\\nReviews\\n\\\"In this philosophical collection that explores doubt\u2014regarding language, God, and the prospect of repeating history\u2014many poems address an unreachable \u201cyou\u201d who could be a lover, a deity, or a ghost of someone long dead. Rosenthal\u2019s translation draws out these poems\u2019 shades of melancholy and whimsy, along with the slant and irregular rhymes that contribute to their uncanny humor. R\u00f3\u017cycki\u2019s verse teems with sensuous, imaginatively rendered details.\\\" \u2014\u00a0The New Yorker\u201cAcross the ninety-nine poems of Polish poet Tomasz R\u00f3\u017cycki\u2019s\u00a0To The Letter, presides a calling out to absence, often in the form of this \u201cyou\u201d whether in loss\u2014cultural, global, personal\u2014or self-examination . . . This collection has, perhaps, added resonance landing in 2023: \u201cYou\u2014out there where the future pushes through like a worm from an apple, only the hole is in heaven and so enormous we\u2019ll all fall in, along with tenements, convenience stores, our entire state\u2014let\u2019s say it\u2019s nowhere\u2014\u201d A notable contribution to Polish poetry available in English\u2013and a vital living voice, no less.\u201d\u00a0\u2014 Rebecca Morgan Frank,\u00a0LitHub\u201cWe live in feral times,\u201d the poet says, asking us \u201cwhat shape this era will carve \/ in flesh.\u201d In Mira Rosenthal\u2019s exacting, beautiful translations, Tomasz R\u00f3\u017cycki's work gives us a moment of honest assessment, answering hard questions without patronizing, with lyric precision. One of Poland\u2019s best living poets, he is writing at the height of his powers. Which, for me, means: there is mystery in his work, that feels trustworthy\u2014\u201cwe will dig ourselves out of our private muck \/of subtext, shed the weight,\u201d he says, \u201cand fly off, empty, for the nearest lightbulb.\u201d It is amongst the quotidian that he seeks to be saved, his is a vision in which despite all the tragedy of this new century, the thrush that sings \u201cat two a.m. outside \/our window in the parking lot has saved \/ the day, the month.\u201d If that is to be our new metaphysics, count me in.\u00a0\u2014 Ilya Kaminsky, author of\u00a0Deaf Republic\u00a0and\u00a0Dancing in Odessa\\\"The poems are intimate and wry, philosophically complex, and charged with metaphors for absence and language itself.\\\"\u00a0\u2014 Dana Isokawa,\u00a0Poets & Writers Magazine\u201cIrony is the spice of poetry . . . R\u00f3\u017cycki\u2019s irony can be caustic (\u201csome people are so poor the only thing they have\/is money, money\u201d), or it can be sublimely political . . . Rosenthal deserves special praise for rendering R\u00f3\u017cycki\u2019s wordplay, musical density, and metonymic dazzle into powerful English . . .\u00a0R\u00f3\u017cycki\u2019s poem as \u201crolled-up paper\/gun\u201d is a handmade, fragile, but potent technology for survival.\u201d\u2014\u00a0Ange Mlinko,\u00a0The New York Review of Books\\\"The past will never leave us. It will haunt our photographs; it will speak between the words that we read and write. R\u00f3\u017cycki\u2019s collection, brought to us through Rosenthal\u2019s beautiful translation, helps us remember that it is art that will lead us through to a bearable future, and art that will always speak the unspeakable.\u201d\u2014\u00a0Iris Dunkle,\u00a0Words Without Borders\\\"Mysterious events in Agualusa\u2019s stories reveal a kinship with Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez, whereas events of mysterious ambiguity fall into Bola\u00f1o\u2019s camp . . .\u00a0Daniel Hahn\u2019s translation successfully conveys that straight-faced equanimity needed for staring absurdities in the eyes.\u201d\u2014\u00a0Tom Bowden,\u00a0The Book Beat\\\"[Mira Rosenthal\u2019s] English iterations fully relay the poems\u2019 accessibility, music, and humor\u2014as well as the ways they integrate into surprising valences with creativity, love, and interbeing . . .To the Letter\u00a0reminds\u00a0us that fragmentation offers an opportunity to listen and create, that the blank spaces between words are places in which new life may yet be lived. It reminds us that the reader is doubly alive, watching and being watched, even\u00a0from\u00a0the shadows.\u201d\u00a0\u2014 Michael Collins,\u00a0Asymptote Journal\\\"For R\u00f3\u017cycki, the void is . . . about loss\u2014whether of the place he was forced to flee, or of the life he missed out on as a consequence . . . Where poetry usually stops at anguish, R\u00f3\u017cycki goes the whole length to realize the fullness of a proxy conjured by loss, the stranger who lives on in the mind.\\\"\u00a0\u2014 Janani Ambikapathy,\u00a0Harriet Books\u00a0(the blog of the Poetry Foundation)\\nAbout the Author\\nTOMASZ R\u00d3\u017bYCKI is the author of eleven volumes of poetry and prose. Over the last decade he has garnered almost every prize Poland has to offer as well as widespread critical acclaim, with work translated into numerous languages and frequent appearances at international festivals. In the U.S., he has been featured at the Unterberg Poetry Center, the Princeton Poetry Festival, and the Brooklyn Book Festival. His volume Colonies (translated by Mira Rosenthal) won the Northern California Book Award and was a finalist for numerous other prizes, including the International Griffin Poetry Prize and the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize.MIRA ROSENTHAL is the author of The Local World, which won the Wick Poetry Prize. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and Stanford University\u2019s Stegner Fellowship, and her work appears regularly in such journals as Poetry, Ploughshares, Threepenny Review, Guernica, Harvard Review, New England Review, A Public Space, and Oxford American. Her honors include a PEN\/Heim Translation Fund Award, a Fulbright Fellowship, a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies, and residencies at Hedgebrook and MacDowell. She teaches creative writing at Cal Poly and lives on the central coast of California.\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"pl-PL\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2024\/08\/07\/to-the-letter-poetry-collection-by-tomasz-rozycki\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2024\/08\/To-the-letter.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2024\/08\/To-the-letter.png\",\"width\":754,\"height\":823},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2024\/08\/07\/to-the-letter-poetry-collection-by-tomasz-rozycki\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"„To the Letter” Poetry Collection by Tomasz R\u00f3\u017cycki\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/\",\"name\":\"Instytut Polski w Londynie\",\"description\":\"Instytuty Polskie\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"pl-PL\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/#\/schema\/person\/650660f82290e905505348ef8ca79a33\",\"name\":\"konopkab\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"pl-PL\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/fb1006bc5b4ae26fa605cdf675d5e97c?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/fb1006bc5b4ae26fa605cdf675d5e97c?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"konopkab\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/author\/konopkab\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"\"To the Letter\" Poetry Collection by Tomasz R\u00f3\u017cycki - Instytut Polski w Londynie","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2024\/08\/07\/to-the-letter-poetry-collection-by-tomasz-rozycki\/","og_locale":"pl_PL","og_type":"article","og_title":"\"To the Letter\" Poetry Collection by Tomasz R\u00f3\u017cycki - Instytut Polski w Londynie","og_description":"Published January 2024 by Archipelago Books Frank, acute, and intimate poems of human loss, resilience, and love \u2013 a detective poem, a historical hopscotch, a love story \u201cA truly lyrical longing for the world to be transformed.\u201d\u2014 Polish Book Institute R\u00f3\u017cycki collects moments of illumination \u2013 a cat dashing out of a window and „feral […]","og_url":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2024\/08\/07\/to-the-letter-poetry-collection-by-tomasz-rozycki\/","og_site_name":"Instytut Polski w Londynie","article_published_time":"2024-08-07T12:49:25+00:00","article_modified_time":"2024-08-22T09:31:14+00:00","og_image":[{"width":754,"height":823,"url":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2024\/08\/To-the-letter.png","type":"image\/png"}],"author":"konopkab","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Napisane przez":"konopkab","Szacowany czas czytania":"8 minut"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"event","@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2024\/08\/07\/to-the-letter-poetry-collection-by-tomasz-rozycki\/","url":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2024\/08\/07\/to-the-letter-poetry-collection-by-tomasz-rozycki\/","name":"\"To the Letter\" Poetry Collection by Tomasz R\u00f3\u017cycki","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2024\/08\/07\/to-the-letter-poetry-collection-by-tomasz-rozycki\/#primaryimage"},"image":["https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2024\/08\/To-the-letter.png","https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2024\/08\/To-the-letter-275x300.png","https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2024\/08\/To-the-letter.png","https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2024\/08\/To-the-letter.png"],"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2024\/08\/To-the-letter.png","datePublished":"2024-08-07T12:49:25+02:00","dateModified":"2024-08-22T09:31:14+02:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/#\/schema\/person\/650660f82290e905505348ef8ca79a33"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2024\/08\/07\/to-the-letter-poetry-collection-by-tomasz-rozycki\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"pl-PL","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2024\/08\/07\/to-the-letter-poetry-collection-by-tomasz-rozycki\/"]}],"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","startDate":"2024-01-09","endDate":"2024-01-09","eventStatus":"EventScheduled","eventAttendanceMode":"OfflineEventAttendanceMode","location":{"@type":"place","name":"","address":"","geo":{"@type":"GeoCoordinates","latitude":"","longitude":""}},"description":"Published January 2024 by Archipelago Books\nFrank, acute, and intimate poems of human loss, resilience, and love \u2013 a detective poem, a historical hopscotch, a love story\u201cA truly lyrical longing for the world to be transformed.\u201d\u2014 Polish Book Institute\nR\u00f3\u017cycki collects moments of illumination \u2013 a cat dashing out of a window and \"feral sun\" streaking in, a body planting itself in the ground like rhubarb and flowering. He collects and collects, opens a crack, and clutches a shrapnel of epiphany.Tomasz R\u00f3\u017cycki's\u00a0To the Letter\u00a0follows Lieutenant Anielewicz on the hunt for any clues that might lead 21st century human beings out of a sense of despair. With authoritarianism rising across Eastern Europe, the Lieutenant longs for a secret hero. At first, he suspects some hidden mechanism afoot: fruit tutors him in the ways of color, he drifts out to sea to study the grammar of tides, or he gazes at the sun as it thrums away like a timepiece. In one poem, he admits \"this is the story of my confusion,\" and in the next the Lieutenant is back on the trail. \"This lunacy needs a full investigation,\" he jibes.He wants to get to the bottom of it all, but he's often bewitched by letters and the trickery of language. Diacritics on Polish words form a \"flock of sooty flecks, clinging to letters\" and Lieutenant Anielewicz studies the tails, accents, and strokes that twist this script.While the Lieutenant can't write a coherent code to solve life's mysteries or to fill the absence of a country rent by war, his search for patterns throughout art, philosophy, and literature lead not to despair but to an affirmation of the importance of human love.\nTo buy the collection, see the Amazon link below: \nTo the Letter: Poems eBook : Rozycki, Tomasz, Rosenthal, Mira: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store\nOr check with your preferred bookseller\nReviews\n\"In this philosophical collection that explores doubt\u2014regarding language, God, and the prospect of repeating history\u2014many poems address an unreachable \u201cyou\u201d who could be a lover, a deity, or a ghost of someone long dead. Rosenthal\u2019s translation draws out these poems\u2019 shades of melancholy and whimsy, along with the slant and irregular rhymes that contribute to their uncanny humor. R\u00f3\u017cycki\u2019s verse teems with sensuous, imaginatively rendered details.\" \u2014\u00a0The New Yorker\u201cAcross the ninety-nine poems of Polish poet Tomasz R\u00f3\u017cycki\u2019s\u00a0To The Letter, presides a calling out to absence, often in the form of this \u201cyou\u201d whether in loss\u2014cultural, global, personal\u2014or self-examination . . . This collection has, perhaps, added resonance landing in 2023: \u201cYou\u2014out there where the future pushes through like a worm from an apple, only the hole is in heaven and so enormous we\u2019ll all fall in, along with tenements, convenience stores, our entire state\u2014let\u2019s say it\u2019s nowhere\u2014\u201d A notable contribution to Polish poetry available in English\u2013and a vital living voice, no less.\u201d\u00a0\u2014 Rebecca Morgan Frank,\u00a0LitHub\u201cWe live in feral times,\u201d the poet says, asking us \u201cwhat shape this era will carve \/ in flesh.\u201d In Mira Rosenthal\u2019s exacting, beautiful translations, Tomasz R\u00f3\u017cycki's work gives us a moment of honest assessment, answering hard questions without patronizing, with lyric precision. One of Poland\u2019s best living poets, he is writing at the height of his powers. Which, for me, means: there is mystery in his work, that feels trustworthy\u2014\u201cwe will dig ourselves out of our private muck \/of subtext, shed the weight,\u201d he says, \u201cand fly off, empty, for the nearest lightbulb.\u201d It is amongst the quotidian that he seeks to be saved, his is a vision in which despite all the tragedy of this new century, the thrush that sings \u201cat two a.m. outside \/our window in the parking lot has saved \/ the day, the month.\u201d If that is to be our new metaphysics, count me in.\u00a0\u2014 Ilya Kaminsky, author of\u00a0Deaf Republic\u00a0and\u00a0Dancing in Odessa\"The poems are intimate and wry, philosophically complex, and charged with metaphors for absence and language itself.\"\u00a0\u2014 Dana Isokawa,\u00a0Poets & Writers Magazine\u201cIrony is the spice of poetry . . . R\u00f3\u017cycki\u2019s irony can be caustic (\u201csome people are so poor the only thing they have\/is money, money\u201d), or it can be sublimely political . . . Rosenthal deserves special praise for rendering R\u00f3\u017cycki\u2019s wordplay, musical density, and metonymic dazzle into powerful English . . .\u00a0R\u00f3\u017cycki\u2019s poem as \u201crolled-up paper\/gun\u201d is a handmade, fragile, but potent technology for survival.\u201d\u2014\u00a0Ange Mlinko,\u00a0The New York Review of Books\"The past will never leave us. It will haunt our photographs; it will speak between the words that we read and write. R\u00f3\u017cycki\u2019s collection, brought to us through Rosenthal\u2019s beautiful translation, helps us remember that it is art that will lead us through to a bearable future, and art that will always speak the unspeakable.\u201d\u2014\u00a0Iris Dunkle,\u00a0Words Without Borders\"Mysterious events in Agualusa\u2019s stories reveal a kinship with Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez, whereas events of mysterious ambiguity fall into Bola\u00f1o\u2019s camp . . .\u00a0Daniel Hahn\u2019s translation successfully conveys that straight-faced equanimity needed for staring absurdities in the eyes.\u201d\u2014\u00a0Tom Bowden,\u00a0The Book Beat\"[Mira Rosenthal\u2019s] English iterations fully relay the poems\u2019 accessibility, music, and humor\u2014as well as the ways they integrate into surprising valences with creativity, love, and interbeing . . .To the Letter\u00a0reminds\u00a0us that fragmentation offers an opportunity to listen and create, that the blank spaces between words are places in which new life may yet be lived. It reminds us that the reader is doubly alive, watching and being watched, even\u00a0from\u00a0the shadows.\u201d\u00a0\u2014 Michael Collins,\u00a0Asymptote Journal\"For R\u00f3\u017cycki, the void is . . . about loss\u2014whether of the place he was forced to flee, or of the life he missed out on as a consequence . . . Where poetry usually stops at anguish, R\u00f3\u017cycki goes the whole length to realize the fullness of a proxy conjured by loss, the stranger who lives on in the mind.\"\u00a0\u2014 Janani Ambikapathy,\u00a0Harriet Books\u00a0(the blog of the Poetry Foundation)\nAbout the Author\nTOMASZ R\u00d3\u017bYCKI is the author of eleven volumes of poetry and prose. Over the last decade he has garnered almost every prize Poland has to offer as well as widespread critical acclaim, with work translated into numerous languages and frequent appearances at international festivals. In the U.S., he has been featured at the Unterberg Poetry Center, the Princeton Poetry Festival, and the Brooklyn Book Festival. His volume Colonies (translated by Mira Rosenthal) won the Northern California Book Award and was a finalist for numerous other prizes, including the International Griffin Poetry Prize and the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize.MIRA ROSENTHAL is the author of The Local World, which won the Wick Poetry Prize. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and Stanford University\u2019s Stegner Fellowship, and her work appears regularly in such journals as Poetry, Ploughshares, Threepenny Review, Guernica, Harvard Review, New England Review, A Public Space, and Oxford American. Her honors include a PEN\/Heim Translation Fund Award, a Fulbright Fellowship, a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies, and residencies at Hedgebrook and MacDowell. She teaches creative writing at Cal Poly and lives on the central coast of California."},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"pl-PL","@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2024\/08\/07\/to-the-letter-poetry-collection-by-tomasz-rozycki\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2024\/08\/To-the-letter.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2024\/08\/To-the-letter.png","width":754,"height":823},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/2024\/08\/07\/to-the-letter-poetry-collection-by-tomasz-rozycki\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"„To the Letter” Poetry Collection by Tomasz R\u00f3\u017cycki"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/#website","url":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/","name":"Instytut Polski w Londynie","description":"Instytuty Polskie","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"pl-PL"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/#\/schema\/person\/650660f82290e905505348ef8ca79a33","name":"konopkab","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"pl-PL","@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/fb1006bc5b4ae26fa605cdf675d5e97c?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/fb1006bc5b4ae26fa605cdf675d5e97c?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"konopkab"},"url":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/author\/konopkab\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8329"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8461,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8329\/revisions\/8461"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}