Although the past is a constant theme in Rózycki's work, the present
erupts with no less urgency . . . he witnesses the ant-like unimportance
of human beings viewed from a cosmic perspective.--Helen Vendler,
Harvard University
The hero of the mock poem, Grandson, leaves his hometown of Opole, in
the western Polish region of Silesia, to organize a family reunion in
the Ukraine where his family had lived before World War II--before being
forcibly resettled along with many thousands of other Poles. In this,
his sixth book, Tomasz Rózycki talks back, both to history and to
important literary predecessors such as Czeslaw Milosz and Adam
Mickiewicz, in language that is as playful as it is masterful. Twelve
Stations is a masterful work of contemporary world poetry by one of its
most outstanding practitioners.
In 2004 Twelve Stations won the prestigious Koscielski Foundation
Prize and was named best Book of the Spring 2004 by the Raczynski
Library in Poznan and its translator Bill Johnston received the 2008
Found in Translation Award.
Tomasz Rózycki also has received the Krzysztof Kamiel Baczynski
Prize (1997), the Czas Kultury Prize (1997), The Rainer Maria Rilke
Award (1998), and the Joseph Brodskie Prize from Zeszyty Literackie
(2006), and has been nominated twice for Poland's most prestigious
literary award, the NIKE Prize (2005 and 2007).
