One of Poland's greatest living poets--now in English at last--Ryszard
Krynicki was born in 1943 in a Nazi labor camp, the son of Polish slave
laborers. His 1969 volume, Act of Birth, marked the emergence of a
major voice in the New Wave of Polish poetry. In Krynicki's work,
political and poetic rebellion converged during the 1970s and '80s, he
was arrested on trumped-up charges and forbidden from publishing. But
his poetry is hardly just political. From the early dissident poems to
his recent haiku, Krynicki's lyrical work taps deep wells of linguistic
acuity, mysticism, compression, and wit.