Curl Poetry Markup

Some new links have been added to http://poets.aule-browser.com.

Poems now included are by Shakespeare, Czeslaw Milosz, Albrecht Haushofer and others.

Most of the poetry pages require the Curl RTE browser plugin from www.curl.com.

Poems under copyright use the Curl web language to disable text selection and copy menus.

Online Chapbook

 
I have added a Curl page to aule-browser.com with poem links:

   http://poems.aule-browser.com/curl.htm

That index page now requires the Curl RTE plugin for your browser.  It is available at

   http://www.curl.com/download/rte/index.php

At the moment "Thanksgiving, Medicine Lake" is in Curl poetry markup.

If you read Japanese, there is a good deal of current information at

   http://www.curlap.com/

Curl open source projects are hosted at sourceforge.net

Postwar Polish Poetry (25 Polish Poets post-1956)

These are the 25 poets of the 3rd Ed. of Postwar Polish Poetry (1983):

Stanisław Barańczak  http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Bara%C5%84czak
Miron Białoszewski  http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miron_Bia%C5%82oszewski
Ernest Bryll http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Bryll
Bogdan Czaykowski  http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdan_Czaykowski
Witold Gombrowicz*  http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witold_Gombrowicz
Stanisław Grochowiak  http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Grochowiak
Jerzy Harasymowicz  http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerzy_Harasymowicz
Zbigniew Herbert  http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zbigniew_Herbert
Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz [Eleuter]  http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaros%C5%82aw_Iwaszkiewicz
Mieczysław Jastrun  http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mieczys%C5%82aw_Jastrun
Tymoteusz Karpowicz  http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tymoteusz_Karpowicz
Urszula Kozioł [Antoni Migacz; Mirka Kargol; Faun]  http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urszula_Kozio%C5%82
Czesław Miłosz  http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czes%C5%82aw_Mi%C5%82osz
Tadeusz Nowak  http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadeusz_Nowak
Julian Przyboś  http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Przybo%C5%9B
Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz  http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaros%C5%82aw_Marek_Rymkiewicz
Tadeusz Różewicz   http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadeusz_R%C3%B3%C5%BCewicz
Antoni Słonimski http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoni_S%C5%82onimski
Leopold Staff http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Staff
Anna Świrszczyńska  http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_%C5%9Awirszczy%C5%84ska
Wisława Szymborska   http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wis%C5%82awa_Szymborska
Aleksander Wat  http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksander_Wat
Adam Ważyk [Adam Wagman]  http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Wa%C5%BCyk
Kazimierz Wroczyński [Wier...] http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazimierz_Wroczy%C5%84ski
Adam Zagajewski  http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Zagajewski

*excerpts from the writer's play "The Marriage"

ISBN: 9780520044760 University of California Press

cf: http://pl.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kategoria:Polscy_poeci&from=A
cp: http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kategoria:Polscy_poeci_emigracyjni
contrast: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_poets

Władysław Szlengel, Zuzanna Ginczanka

Even in the 1982 third edition of Postwar Polish Poetry there is no poem of Władysław Szlengel.

Yes, he was annihilated in the Warsaw ghetto in 1943 and so is a poet of the Shoah.

But the 1943 poem of Czesław Miłosz places a "New Testamenr Jew" as one of the "uncircumcised" before the burning ghetto.

The volume was "Poetry" and not "Poets".  And yes, in a land and language of poets, some as much Lithuanians as Poles, so many were lost, so many were in Vilnius, so may poems burned on notepaper, in notebooks ... and this collection focussed on poetry after 1956.  But it is organized by poet.  There were poems they had no claim to write.  At least one of those poems should be present: just as Leopold Staff opens the collection proper, a properly "postwar" entry is missing (compare the long entry hallway into Yad Vashem museum.)  Post-disasters, if you will, require something of what is other, alter.  Poles are very clear about this: some poets were and are emigré poets ( and remain so, even if buried on Polish soil.)  They are other than those who remained within the nation.

Could a new 4th edition (not expanded, but corrected) open with excerpts from a text such as "Co czytałem umarłym"  ?  Perhaps preferred: "Rozmowa z dzieckiem" (Conversation with a Child") or excerpts from "A Page from the Deportation Diary".

Were we to say, in 1982, that this was a "Jewish" poem?  By 1982, did not a poem in translation of Paul Celan or Nelly Sachs merit a place among "Postwar Polish Poetry"?  What had been the price of nations and ethnicity and mother-tongue?

Why after 1989-1990 was it not an issue to release a 4th edition?  Not even after the death of Miłosz?

In a nation where today some 30 myriad* of Jews pass unwittingly as "Poles", what was that "postwar" poetry that was "Polish" by 1982 ?

Was not the TSS Stefan Batory still arriving in Montreal from Gdynia in 1982 ?  When I met Miłosz at a post-Nobel reception at McGill Univeristy, I wanted to speak to him of the anti-Semitism among the Polish arrivals and how it was even among the newly arrived from Vietnam, percolating into a community from those explaining the "English" situation in Montreal.  There he stood at the University of some of Canada's great Jewish poets - what could be more fitting?

The word "Jew" may be a hapax legomenon in the collection (based on Google Books search) but I have to ask: where is the poem for the brief frenzied Pogrom that occurred after the liberation - an event sparked by a classic blood libel ?  Is that poem in a notebook, on notepaper in a box in some archive waiting for the internet?

I would propose a corrective to University of California Press for any e-book edition of this classic of modern Polish poems in translation.

* perhaps on the order of 300,000 in a population exceeding 30 million (almost forty.)

Dates of uprisings: the powstanie w getcie warszawskim of 1943 was followed by the powstanie warszawskie of 1944.

Note on myriads of the good, the just and the victims: of some few millions of altruistic Polish rescuers/non-collaborators who actively saved or passively helped to save tens of thousands of ethnic and religious Jews on Polish territory, over 6000 [of possibly 100,000 such heroes on wartime Polish soil alone] have been named "righteous among the nations", including Czesław Miłosz.  The loss of some six million residents of Poland must be weighed when assessing the stories told by children arriving in Iran, stories of those traitors, the "Jewish intellectual", the "Jewish intelligentsia", the persisting Żydokomuna canard spread by propagandists - children who, if they survived, heard as adults anti-Zionist propaganda from Soviet rulers.

See: Katyn and Jedwabne massacres, Kielce pogrom.

Warsaw, Jan. 1945 aerial photograph

terms: Żyd Żydowskich Żydówka Rabin Synagoga Hebrajski Jidysz Tora Talmud Talmudyczne Całopalenie masakra rzeź jatki ubój pogrom Holocaust Syjonistycznego Syjoniści antysemitą antysemitami

To be clear: 1956 was chosen for the new openness.  But was it not the moment to translate from Hebrew into English for at least one Pole who, a Jew, had escaped, survived ?  Today we might turn to Lillian Boraks‑Nemetz for a poem for children - the missing children.  It is not the fault of poets that four major extermination camps were on Polish soil: but the new openness also helped foster an enormous lie which required correction by more than historians.  This collection should be re-issued with one major addition.

Clarification: Ajzyk Wagman is not that poet: he was in the Soviet Union.  The poet Saul Wagman may have committed suicide in the Soviet Union in 1943 (see the poem by Adam Ważyk in the collection.)

Antoni Słonimski: his great grandafther was Abraham Sztern.

Jan Brzechwa  [Jan Wiktor Lesman]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Brzechwa

Anatol Stern was no longer active as a poet by 1956 (having returned to Warsaw in 1948.)

Bolesław Leśmian may be the missing poet of this collection, but he died in 1937.

Jan Brzechwa  [Jan Wiktor Lesman] might be the contributor for a children's poem from his 1937 book.

Stanisław Jerzy Lec is absent from the collection although he, too, was briefly a postwar Polish diplomat.

Mieczysław Jastrun was baptized; his grave is not in a Jewish cemetery nor does he address us as a Jew.

Did Julian Tuwim leave nothing suitable in his papers (died 1953.)

Another possibility: Roman Brandstaetter.

My nomination: Zuzanna Ginczanka [Zuzanna Polina Gincburg], denounced and executed, 1944.  Her work failed to be "rehabilitated" in 1956 and by 1982 may have been unknown to women studying at Berkeley under C.M.

• 1936: O centaurach
• 1953: Wiersze wybrane
• 1991: Udźwignąć własne szczęście

See: role of Julian Tuwim in her decision to write in the Polish language.
Possible resource: Maciej Woźniak (poet)

Her Non omnis moriar, as translated by Nancy Kassell and Anita Safran and which may not have appealed to CM.  Perhaps something from 1942 or early 1943 is among his papers ... something distributed by hand.

Tadeusz Rozewicz "Albumen"

Consider reading "Albumen" by Tadeusz Różewicz as the sick man deprived of his spectacles (as if they mediate the world.)

What he "swallowed" was not the sight of the moon, but a mere street lamp seen through the window.

As might a dog.

The four-legged faux-angel is the succubus Lilith and not his ministering muse, one of those other "sisters", a daughter of Mnemosyne [siostra opieki].

He hears; the air is redolent of jasmine ... or it was a mere fragrance, cheap perfume?

From elsewhere: the sick man stares at the ceiling; there is no window that he is able to see or might see through.

Question: in the Polish original, does he "see" ?

see also:

Ale kto zobaczy moją matkę

w sinym kitlu w białym szpitalu

see also:

biała noc

martwe światło

leży na pościeli

cp: his "Nocna zmaza"

notes:
Albumen foam
Albumen emulsion
Manna devoid of any generative impetus, any speck of incipient life.

Note: Artemis supplanted Selene; the genealogy of the muses is unclear, murky.
Lilith came into the garden: this setting need not be Hades or the underground (egg and sulphurous odour.)
Egg and mouths: see "Tampopo"

On the missing yolk: T.R. writing on a spermatozoon
cf: stanza

Życie jest formą
istnienia białka

wikipedia poetry links for Modern American Poetry

I note in the discussion of a wp article that many links for "Modern American Poetry" are broken due to uicu.edu not forwarding to illinois.edu

I repaired those at the article for Anthony Hecht.

Why care about en.wikipedia.org ?

One reason is that an internet search for a poet throws back so many trash pages ( and pages for lyrics is a worse case.)

At this time, wp tends to be one way to avoid trash pages if you have forgotten http://www.poets.org or that site happens not to be helpful.

The American poets site at uicu is currently http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/index.htm

John Barton

The editor of The Malahat Review (whose table I had joined) expressed the view that I expect too much of poetry editors.

I wish now that I had thought of Pound putting blue ink on Eliot.  Or the need of an editor for John Clare.

My own assertions confounded these three: to burnish a key and to remove burs from a key and to use a bur to work metal.  And yet I insist that to buff a key is not to sand a key.  And burnish suggests the shiny new key, its ridged edges like brushed metal.  A new key is brushed, not sanded.

But perhaps even memory failed me, and the irritation of the sanded key is to be found in a recent number of The Fiddlehead ....

See: 'deburring brush' and deburring newly cut keys; dental burs; burr holes, trephine, trepan and other things we need about as much ...