Customer Reviews

The New Century: Poems

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This book of fine poems from several of Lipska's previous publications has been out from Northwestern University Press since November 2009 and I can't believe I am writing the first review on Amazon. Hopefully, it won't be the final word.

As a Polish-American poet I am particularly interested in Lipska's work as she has been chronicling personally what has been happening in Poland over some of its most interesting and troubled history. She is only a year older than I am. She has nineteen books of poems to her credit and her poetry has been translated into fifteen languages.

In this poem "Freedom" Lipska says it all. (And if not all, much.)

"My country roams through freedom.
Pretends to be Europe.

The streets lie prostrate in crosses.

A pilgrimage of waiters
carries the Holy Button on a collection plate."


"Brevity is the soul of wit might" be the appropriate motto for Lipska's vision.

This poem about "the holidays" Polish-style, which is far removed from anything even remotely resembling the nostalgie many in-country and out associate with that season.

That's Why

Sleet at the table.
At the places of mother father grandparents
a frozen memory. A platter of watches.
Glasses with incurable defects in vision.

Silence lags.
A Christmas carol sinks to the floor.
No one calls anyone for help.

That's why I don't like the holidays.

The New Century collection is a map from the old century with much familiar territory. However, just like the path when one walks in the woods is never the same going or coming, so these poems provide new byways of seeing at every surreal and insightful turn.