Been and Gone: Poems of Julian Kornhauser - Softcover

"Julian Kornhauser writes of "the miracle of the pillow with four corners," a button "deprived of its thread," a "piece of glass" flecked with blood -- the luminous things of the world that reflect with haunting precision our precarious relationship to the "expenses and losses" of beauty. Piotr Florczyk introduces American readers to one of Poland's most significant contemporary poets in translations that bring alive Kornhauser's lines with a thrilling immediacy." - Michael Collier

Poetry. Translated from the Polish by Piotr Florczyk. Born in Gliwice in 1946, Julian Kornhauser is one of the most acclaimed figures of Polish poetry writing today. A major figure of the New Wave movement of the 1970s, he has published eight books since the mid-1990s. This debut collection of his work in English, which draws exclusively on three recent volumes and presents the poems in a new arrangement, touches upon most, if not all, of Kornhauser's major subject matters, formal strategies, and thematic concerns, giving American readers the opportunity to discover one of Poland's most important contemporary writers in Piotr Florczyk's splendid translations.