"White Week and Other Stories" by Wojciech Chmielewski

The Polish writer Wojciech Chmielewski isn’t exactly a household name in America, and for a very good reason. Up to now, none of his writing has been published in English. Wiseblood Books has changed that with the publication of White Week and Other Stories, translated by Katarzyna Bylow.  

Chmielewski is best known in Poland for his short stories, which have won awards in his home country. But he’s also an essayist, literary critic, and playwright for Polich Radio Theatre. This collection of stories, many previously published in Polish literary journals and anthologies. Re largely about Warsaw, a Warsaw that is there and the city that used to be. (Much of the city was destroyed during World War II and then rebuilt under communist rule.)

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Brotherhood of the Byline: Andrew and Lee Child on Jack Reacher, Past and Present – John Valeri at CrimeReads.

 

Inside the Workings of Joel J. Miller’s The Idea Machine: How Books Built Our World and Shape Our Future – Suzanne Smith at Front Porch Republic.

 

The Nights of Old London – Spitalfields Life.

A Legend in Iran: The Poems of Shamseddin Hafez

Shamseddin Hafez was writing poetry in what is now south-central Iran at the same time Geoffrey Chaucer was writing poetry in England. His influence continues today in Iran, where he’s still the country’s most popular poet.

Hafez was born between 1310 and 1325 in the city of Shiraz. His real name was Shamseddin Mohammed, but he used “Hafez” as his pen name and it is by Hafez he is known today. We know certain basic facts about him. He was married and had one child. He was often involved in political intrigue and upheavals at court; his fortunes ebbed and flowed with changes in rulers. He taught Koranic studies, and he’s said to have memorized the Koran as a boy listening to his father’s daily recitations. He died in 1388 and was buried in Shiraz; his tomb is still a major site for tourism and pilgrimage.

He wrote poetry in primarily one form – the ghazal, rhyming couplets with a refrain. Translating a Persian ghazal into an English ghazal presents numerous literary challenges, writes Reza Ordoubadian, the translator of the 2006 edition I read, The Poems of Hafez.

To continue reading, please see my post today at TweetspeakPoetry.

Top photograph: The tomb of Hafez in Shiraz, Iran.

Translation

It is mutual, of course.

I come walking

with my light news

(the San Antonio Light?)

except you see a mist

I mean to be a fog, like

all news is, all

the fog that’s print to fit.

I offer spirit but

you want flesh.

Some things, like wind,

and ghosts, are

beyond translation.

Today at TweetSpeak Poetry, Matthew Kreider has posted “July Mosaics: The Shards,” Highlighting the theme of the Cento (a kind of mosaic poem) for July. To participate, you take the poem that arrives via EveryDay Poems on Mondays and pull words, thoughts, ideas and themes from it to create a new poem. And then you tweet it, or leave it as a comment to the post, or something like that. The poem that arrived today was “BiLingual” by L.L. Barkat, the author of InsideOut: Poems.  

Photograph: Fog in the Forest by Larisa Larisa via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.