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Poets & Writers
Reading a literary magazine is a lot like attending a party. When you arrive, you’re usually greeted by the host (in an editor’s note); you encounter a throng of people (contributors), some of whom are friends, while others are complete strangers; there’s always at least one person (typically a poet) who loses all decorum and makes a spectacle of himself; and you usually leave having learned something new. In some cases there is seemingly no point to the party—other than to party, which, come to think of it, is as good a reason as any—but sometimes the revelers have been assembled for a more specific reason. The eighth issue of lyric, the biannual literary magazine founded by Mira Rosenthal in 2001, is definitely a party with a purpose. To find poems by the twenty-four contributors included in the special “New Polish Poetry” issue of lyric, Rosenthal spent two years researching contemporary Polish poetry as a Fulbright fellow in Krakow. The result is a collection of work that may expand readers’ understanding of the country’s poetry beyond what they’ve read by Nobel laureates Wislawa Szymborska and Czeslaw Milosz. Also included in the issue is an essay by poet and critic Kacper Bartczak, who describes the effects that political changes in the 1980s had on Polish writers, and an interview with critic Marian Stala.
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