[New-Poetry] Zagajewski on Milosz

[jforjames at aol.com]

http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/zagajewski_f08.html

I can't write a memoir of Milosz: so much was hidden in his life. Besides, he was an ecstatic poet and an ecstatic person. We'll never really know people like that. They hide their great moments of elation; they never share with others the short joys of their sudden discoveries, and the sadness when the vision fades. They thrive in solitude. With their friends they are usually correct, measured, just like everybody else. They are like a ship we sometimes see in a peaceful port: a huge immobile mass of metal covered by spots of rust, a few sailors lazily sunbathing on the deck, a blue shirt drying on a rope. One wouldn't guess that this ship was once struggling with the hurricane, barely surviving the onslaught of big waves, singing an iron song... No, I didn't know him enough. I have to return to his poems, to his essays.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/pipermail/new-poetry/attachments/20081208/b6a8c6f3/attachment.html