Poetry, Translations

The World Shared

by Dariusz Sośnicki, Piotr Florczyk, Boris Dralyuk

“Three Rooks”

(the head and two linesmen)
took over the top of the unfinished
building and said:
the plastic falls in sheets
from the back of that animal at the bottom,
the wind tosses them like the ears of a spaniel on the run
and we see the ribs;
let the world not play dumb!
Everyone has a skeleton inside him,

and the snow is a clot,
not powdered sugar.

Praise for The World Shared

“Reading Dariusz Sośnicki’s poems, Americans may recognize John Ashbery’s quick jump-cuts and the moral seriousness of Jorie Graham, mixed with the quirky anger and humor of, perhaps, Bill Knott, but the results sound totally fresh …This poetry harbors venomous sarcasm, even cynicism, but it works, like a sand blaster on old paint, in the service of new beauty, as though the self, roiling in history, purging its dark energies, could at last speak the truth.” —Craig Morgan Teicher

“What is truly wonderful… is that these poems nonetheless steadily engage us with their surprises, their quickness, their mysteries, and, often, captivate us with their invention.” —Stephen Yenser

“This first American book from the prolific and celebrated Polish poet and critic not only survives translation; its urbane, articulate, unpredictable free verse positively flourishes in the American English that the facing-page edition provides ... the poetry introduced here has come to stay.”—Publishers Weekly

“[The World Shared] is destined to become an international classic ... Sosnicki is a fearless and tenacious intellectual whose poetry exhibits flashes of brilliance that illuminate our most obscure and often unacknowledged fears about contemporary life.”—The Journal

“Sosnicki has loads of talent, and this volume offers North American readers entry into his necessary poetry ... Sosnicki reaches out to each of us, tries to wipe the anonymity off our faces, and to recover, if not rescue us, as an archeologist recovers a mud-smeared amulet from a deep stratum.”—Entropy

About the Author

Dariusz Sośnicki is a poet, essayist, and editor. In 1994, he published the poetry collection Marlewo, which received Czas Kultury’s Best First Book Award. Sośnicki’s poems and literary essays have been published in many magazines and anthologies, including The New Yorker, in both Polish and in translation. From 2005-2013 Sośnicki worked at W.A.B. Publishing House as editor of Polish contemporary fiction. He currently lives in Poznań, Poland.

About the Translators

Piotr Florczyk is a poet, essayist, and translator from his native Polish. He is editor and translator of Froth: Poems by Jaroslaw Mikolajewski (Calypso Editions, 2013), The Folding Star and Other Poems by Jacek Gutorow (BOA Editions, 2012), Building the Barricade and Other Poems of Anna Swir (Calypso Editions, 2011), and Been and Gone: Poems of Julian Kornhauser (Marick Press, 2009). He teaches at the University of San Diego and at San Diego State University.

Boris Dralyuk holds a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures from UCLA. He is the translator of Leo Tolstoy's How Much Land Does a Man Need (Calypso Editions, 2010), A Slap in the Face: Four Russian Furturist Manifestos (Insert Blanc Press, 2013), and Anton Chekhov's Little Trilogu (forthcoming from Calypso Editions, 2014), and co-translator of Polina Barskova's The Zoe in Winter: Selected Poems (Melville House, 2011). He is also the co-editor, with Robert Chandler and Irina Mashinski, of the forthcoming Anthology of Russsian Poetry from Puskin to Brodsky (Penguin Classics, 2015). He received First Prize in the 2011 Compass Translation Award competition, and, with Irina Mashinski, First Prize in the 2012 Joseph Brodsky/Stephen Spender Translation Prize competition.

Publication Date: June 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-938160-34-9

FormatPaperback

Publication DateJune 10, 2014

ISBN978-1-938160-34-9

$16.00

About the Author

Dariusz Sośnicki

Dariusz Sośnicki the author of nine collections of poetry, including The World Shared, translated from the Polish by Piotr Florczyk and Boris Dralyuk (BOA Editions 2014). He was co-editor of the art-zine Juz Jest Jutro (1991–1994) and co-founder and co-editor of the influential Polish literary biweekly Nowy Nurt (1994–1996). His first collection of poems Marlewo received the best first book award from the magazine Czas Kultury. From 2005 to 2013 he led the department of Polish prose publishing house WAB, and he is currently the editor-in-chief of the Publishing Department of the National Ossoliński Institute.

Piotr Florczyk

Piotr Florczyk is a poet and translator. With Been and Gone (Marick Press, 2009), he introduced the English-speaking audience to Julian Kornhauser (1946-), one of the foremost Polish poets of the Generation of '68. He is also the translator of a collection of poems by Anna Swir (1909-84), Building the Barricade and Other Poems (Calypso Editions, 2011). With BOA Editions, Piotr Florczyk has published The Folding Star and Other Poems by Jacek Guterow (2012), and most recently, The World Shared by Dariusz Sośnicki (2014). He holds an MFA from San Diego State University, and has taught at the University of Delaware, San Diego State University, Antioch University Los Angeles, and at University of California-Riverside. Piotr Florczyk lives in Los Angeles, California.

Boris Dralyuk

Boris Dralyuk holds a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literature from UCLA. He is the translator of Leo Tolstoy’s How Much Does a Man Need (Calypso Editions, 2010), A Slap in the Face: Four Russian Futurist Manifestos (Insert Blanc Press, 2013), and Anton Chekhov’s The Little Trilogy (Calypso Editions, 2014). He is co-translator of Polina Barskova’s The Zoe in Winter: Selected Poems (Melville House, 2011) and The World Shared (BOA Editions, 2014) Dralyuk is also the co-editor of Anthology of Russian Poetry from Pushkin to Brodsky (Penguin Classics, 2015). He received First Prize in the 2011 Compass Translation Award competition, and, with Irina Mashinski, First Prize in the 2012 Joseph Brodsky/Stephen Spender Translation Prize competition.