Dear Ms. Schubert: Poems by Ewa Lipska (The Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation Book 144)

The first complete English translation of Ewa Lipska's exciting "Dear Ms. Schubert" poems Ewa Lipska is one of Europe's most compelling and important poets, but relatively little of her recent work has been translated into English. A Polish-English bilingual edition, Dear Ms. Schubert is the first complete collection of her remarkable poetic postcards addressed to "Ms. Schubert," a mysterious contemporary European everywoman. Written by a certain Mr. Schmetterling ("Mr. Butterfly"), these brief, intimate poems are by turns philosophical, political, and playfully erotic. Combining subversive wit and surrealist imagery, they slowly reveal the contours of a shared secret life played out against a turbulent historical backdrop—a relationship that strikes a precarious balance between deep cultural skepticism and authentic love. Featuring the original Polish text and the English translation on facing pages, Dear Ms. Schubert is a highly original and appealing book from a poet who richly deserves a wide English-language readership. "The book is composed of 62 poems selected from several of Ewa Lipska's books in which the figure Ms. Schubert appears. Ms. Schubert, a modern European everywoman, is the addressee in poems that read like brief, intimate communiqués between a man and a woman whose relationship over time interweaves a shared secret life with the historical domain of wars, extremist governments, shifting economies, languages (Polish, German, English), and technologies. Ms. Schubert, as recipient of these cryptic postcards, represents the poet's subtle call to her readers as we navigate our own historical moment-balancing sociopolitical action with the authentic love that can endure only between and among individuals"-- Provided by publisher