Poetry

Despite my technical background and work demanding a down-to-earth approach, I do read poetry.

Not so experimental in his poetry as his contemporary, Tadeusz Rozewicz, nor as easily accessible to readers as the 1996 Nobel laureate, Wislawa Szymborska, Herbert nonetheless was the moral force of his generation. He belonged to no school of poets, nor did he espouse any philosophical movement. And yet, like the poetry of his distant relative, the English poet George Herbert, his poetry moved in metaphysical spheres and was rooted in the classical tradition. But above all, his preoccupation was with contemporary themes, especially the isolation of the individual vis-a-vis political systems. His was the clarion voice of the disenfranchised. – writes E. J. Czerwinski in his article published by World Literature Today.

Next to Zbigniew Herbert, whom I devoted a website www.zbigniew.herbert.com (in Polish) back in my University years, I also like to read poems and essays by Czeslaw Milosz. My second language German has opened for me the gate to the works of Rainer Maria Rilke and Christian Morgenstern.