Talking to My Body

It's rare that a poet stirs and excites me like this one did. I first came across Swir from the wonderful poetry anthology by Czeslaw Milosz, "A Book of Luminous Things" where she totally captured my attention. The poetry here is always raw, direct and authentic, deeply sensual, accessible, and with none of the self-conscious mannerism or affectation that dominates the academic poetry churned out by American graduates of MFA-programs who are forever trying to get published in dreary WASPish places like The New Yorker. A large part of that is likely due to the fact of Swir having grown up in the place and time that she did, rather than in politically correct, sexually repressed suburbian/middle America.

Fierce. That about sums it up, whether she writes a zen like poem on love and loss("like an eye and an eyelid/united by a tear " in "Sad Lovers") or sex ("you come to me at night,you are an animal/a woman and an animal can be joined/by the night only" in "A Bitch." ) One of her finest poems, discussed by Roger Housden in one of his "Ten Poems" series is here as well, "Thank You,My Fate." She was a remarkable person, fighting in the Polish underground, a nurse in the Warsaw ghetto, once an hour away from execution. Her fierceness comes from her life, one lived fully and in the toughest of circumstances. Copper Canyon has done us a service in unearthing her work from the Polish.

Rare is the poet who can put so much into so little. Anna Swir is one such poet. She writes...I am filled with love...as a great tree with the wind...as a sponge with the ocean...as a great life with suffering...as time with death. So childishly simple. So matter-of-fact and straightforward. Yet, so very correct. So very rich. As is each and every verse within this magnificent collection. For many years ignored in her native Poland, Anna Swir has become discovered anew for the rest of the world thanks to fellow Pole and poet, Czeslaw Milosz. Working alongside American poet Leonard Nathan, Milosz cut these gems of rare beauty and wisdom with an exacting knife. Anna's very unique voice comes across as piercing and original as if she had written these poems in English. If Anna has a soulmate in verse it might be that other solitary siren of the female voice, Emily Dickinson. Whereas Emily explored the hidden corners of the spirit, Anna's subjects center around the body, especially the female one and most of all, what it means to traverse this life as a woman. While her topics range from her impoverished childhood in pre-war Poland to the unspeakable years between 1939 and 1945, Anna's main focus of attention is the examination of love, especially its physical component. Written in a style that is abrupt and yet abundant in both meaning and image, these poems celebrate the joys of the carnal. From a refreshingly female perspective. No roses here, no champagne glasses clinking in the distance, no pink hazes to suffocate on, these poems sketch a reality as it was experienced. For example, the poet praises her thigh as the prime reason for love in her life...It is only thanks to your good looks I can take part in the rites of love. Beware though, those looking for the strictly erotic would best look elsewhere. Anna Swir's world is a dualistic one, one of our crude and cruel instincts and also one of the spiritual promise sometimes found beyond them. The fragrance in the stench. The love in the gratification. The hope in the ruins. Of the act of lust, she writes in deadpan prose...You inseminated me and I gave birth to pearls... Swir tries to shine light into those dark caverns where love is seemingly absent but isn't. Moreover, her poems strive to find a common denominator in all human experience irregardless of the moral element. Cynics might call this a quest for our common animality. I dare to call it a quest for our common humanity. That place where the sun shines with an equal intensity for both saint and sinner alike...She was an evil stepmother. She does not remember that she was evil. But she knows that she is cold. With her deceptively simple style, Swir sometimes surprises the condescendant reader with stings of metaphoric (sometimes even aphoristic) brilliance that force one to stop and ponder. On her mother's death, she coldly muses...when it was over I was a corpse myself. Corpses do not cry. Or with brutal candor,

What can I say. The world is lucky to have the work of Anna Swir. I read her book again and again. Each time, I feel renewed, more easily accepting my own journey.

Anna Swir writes some of the most beautiful and deeply stirring poems I have ever read. It dives into the frailty AND the power of this womans spirit. Her poems paint pictures in your mind so real and tangible it is guranteed to leave you grasping for emotions and feelings that you may not have known existed within you. I say that it's a must read for women, and I know that coming from a man that is kind of a silly statement. But believe me, Anna writes from a unique and touchingly feminist point of view that in my humble opinion, all women would find both refreshing and inspirational. Here's a preview of her work I found to be beautiful: "THE GREATEST LOVE... She is sixty. She lives the greatest love of her life. She walks arm in arm with her dear one, her hair streams in the wind. Her dear one says, You have hair like pearls. Her children say, Old fool." Poems about old women are hard to find, as if they were taboo, or not worth mentioning in pretty prose. Anna Swir relates often to the matriarch as a symbol of timeless beauty and strength. One final: "THANK YOU MY FATE... Great humility fills me, great purity fills me, I make love with my dear as if I made love dying, as if I made love praying, tears pour over my arms and his arms. I don't understand what I feel, I'm crying, I'm crying, it's humility as if I were dead, gratitude, I thank you my fate, I'm unworthy, how beautiful this life." The book is also filled with some statements on her life, which after reading and understanding what she was surrunded by, leaves you in absolute awe every time you swim through her poems. Please, read these poems. You can thank me afterwards.