In Praise of the Unfinished

December 17, 2007
An admired poet and sometime bestseller in Poland—and an important translator of poetry from English into Polish—Hartwig (now age 85) has also led a memorable life, fighting with the resistance in WWII and taking part in the Solidarity movement. This set of limpid, quotable, often bittersweet lyrics and prose poems makes clear that she could become as acclaimed here as her Nobel Prize compatriots Milosz and Symborska. Countryside landscapes and artifacts from the classical past come to Hartwig as emblems of human endurance, compassion and humility. The same virtues illuminate her poems on public occasions, from 9/11 to the era of Polish martial law: “Lord we aren’t the only nation tormented this way,” she prays, “don’t let us take pride in it.” Later poems speak to the international legacy she favors, especially to the French modernist Apollinaire. For all her topical interest Hartwig is finally a poet of enduring consolation, measured reassurance and scenic clarity, who may also appeal to fans of Mary Oliver. After the poet’s death, one prose poem announces, she “would like to be a statue looking at the sea,” with “darkness behind me.”

Starred review from February 15, 2008
The gray eminence of Polish letters, Hartwig, at 85, is little known in America, a situation this selection from her many books should remedy. Her life has included many historically significant moments, for in addition to living through two world wars, she was active in the Solidarity Movement that led to Polish independence in the 1980s. Like the French poet Paul Eluard, Hartwig both embeds her work in the politics of her time and surrealistically transcends it. The books first poem sets the stage, describing how the ocean calming after a storm leads to the absurd hope . . . that everything scattered chaotically in the world will settle down again, in a natural order. Her prose-poems recall Rimbauds, sharing the same quality of visions so vivid that they seem hallucinations. Throughout the book, natural cycles are juxtaposed with the horrors that humanity can create, lending a strangely peaceful quality to Hartwigs work, as when she describes how grace can descend on the wing / of an unknown bird to remind us / the hardship of solitude is measured out equally. Hartwigs work is direct and emotional, yet built of strange and transcendent images.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)