First Things RSS Feed - John Merchant https://www.firstthings.com/author/john-merchant en-us Copyright 2025 First Things. All Rights Reserved. ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) Mon, 20 Jan 2025 16:54:28 -0500 https://d2201k5v4hmrsv.cloudfront.net/img/favicon-196.png First Things RSS Feed Image https://www.firstthings.com/rss/author/john-merchant 60 Poets Who Kept Guard of the City https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2008/01/poets-who-kept-guard-of-the-ci https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2008/01/poets-who-kept-guard-of-the-ci Tue, 15 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500 Poetry, the Polish poet Adam Zagajewski explains, springs from the negotiation poets routinely make between “the real, tangible world of history” and the imaginary. History is not a benign abstraction for the Poles. This was painfully true in the twentieth century, yet out of Poland’s cruel historical experience have arisen two Nobel laureates, Czesław Miłosz (1981) and Wisława Szymborska (1996), as well as several of the most dynamic poets in world literature in the latter half of the twentieth century. Zbigniew Herbert’s Collected Poems and Astonishments: Selected Poems of Anna Kamieńska , recently published in English, are welcome reminders of the powerful Polish lyric voice that emerged to meet the internal need for witness and imagination.

Continue Reading »

]]>