Nothing Lost: Selected Poems - by Maciej Robert (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

An English-language debut by one of Poland's celebrated contemporary poets

Nothing Lost: Selected Poems offers a selection of Maciej Robert's recent poems in a new arrangement. As a lyric poet, Robert expresses the thoughts, feelings, and emotions of a single speaker -- as one definition of "lyric poetry" would have it -- but without forgetting that each one of us is part of a larger whole and thus connected to other human beings and to what's near and what's far. It's a gift, really, to read his work and see the micro and the macro perspectives come into contact, giving rise to a kind of joyous hesitancy on the part of the poet who, thankfully, does not have everything figured out.

Review Quotes

In Skontrum [Robert's selected volume], I have opted for a chronological arrangement to illustrate the trajectory of Maciej Robert's poetry--moving from smoky, caustic, and elegiac structures--granite blocks of verse written in tetrameter and anchored in the registers of an emboldened imagination--to far more capricious and spare poems of observation in the vein of W.C. Williams, frequently drawing upon gnomic wisdom and born of a single reflection or a single, elaborated observation. The foundation for this journey is the history of Poland (and specifically of Lódź) during the era of systemic transformation: the memory of family migration and social advancement, the creeping decline of the Polish People's Republic, and the early years of capitalism--out of which subsequently emerges the average, bourgeois life of the author as a representative of the contemporary middle class. Remaining within the realm of the superstructure is an entire spectral metaphysics, wherein the minor, individual decisions of the protagonists intersect over the years with the randomness of events, until they are finally memorialized and aestheticized within the highly fragile and ethically dubious medium of the poem. Skontrum is, in essence, a narrative of non-identity--of a temporal rift and its consequences."--Jakub Skurtys

Praise for Maciej Robert:

"Robert's poems are filled with an endless index of details. The poet leads the reader through nooks and crannies, side paths, among rust, dust, mud, mold, among garbage, rags, corpses, abandoned objects, and places him in destroyed, neglected apartments. The hero of these poems, whom the author has clearly endowed with many of his own features and experiences, consistently builds and rebuilds from his memories images and situations that are extremely vivid and colorful, and so detailed that they are even somehow disturbing. This is Maciej Robert's poetic strategy: to build from banality, from unimpressive details, painstakingly strung together in a poem--to show the unity of 'then' and 'now', observations and memories. In other words, Maciej Robert tries to capture, through literary means, the phenomena of identity and memory in their elusive essence."--Tomasz Cieślak

"Maciej Robert's new volume of poetry is a philosophical treatise on error--on beginnings and the inevitable end. The author takes the reader on an odyssey, navigating through the void, fragments of history, human fears, and the afterimages of everyday life. This poetic volume by offers an erudite reflection on the genesis of life--a tale of war waged in good faith, and of the specters that will remain after we are gone. In his poetic journey from things to words, Maciej Robert encounters birth, love, animals, the prose of Sebald, and the paintings of Kandinsky. He witnesses death and scenes of exhumation. His latest volume speaks the language of flames, offering poems on geology, meaning, and the remnants of civilization. It is a book both stark and beautiful."--Wydawnictwo Warstwy

About the Author

Maciej Robert is an award-winning Polish poet, essayist, critic, and editor. He has published 11 volumes of poetry and two books of essays, including Perelki i Skowronki. Filmowe adaptacje prozy Bohumila Hrabala (Pearls and Larks. Film Adaptations of Bohumil Hrabal's Prose, 2013) and Rzeki, których nie ma (Rivers That Don't Exist, 2023 - the German translation of the book will be published in 2025). He lives outside of Lódź.

Piotr Florczyk is an award-winning poet, essayist, and translator. He teaches Global Literary Studies at UW-Seattle and lives with his family in Los Angeles.