{"product_id":"our-life-grows-isbn-9781681371603","title":"Our Life Grows","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe first uncensored, English-language translation of a Polish dissident poet's brave act of witness in post-World-War-II Europe.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eThe Polish poet Ryszard Krynicki, born in a Nazi labor camp in Austria in 1943, became one of the most prominent poets of the New Wave generation of 1968, his poetry offering what Adam Michnik has called “a strange and beautiful marriage of Joseph Conrad's heroic ethics with a great metaphysical perspective.” Krynicki is the author of a body of work marked at once by the solitude of a poète maudit and solidarity with a hurt and manipulated community. \u003ci\u003eOur Life Grows\u003c\/i\u003e, published in Paris in 1978, was the first poetry collection to appear as Krynicki intended, beyond the reach of the Communist censorship that had crippled his earlier books. These poems, combining a biting wit and rigorously questioning mind with a surreal imagination, are a vital part of the story of postwar Europe. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis English-only edition does not include the poems in their original language.“Krynicki has a rare gift of naming things even in shortest poems; he  goes straight to the essence. Among Polish poets and readers he has the  reputation of a master, of an archer who never misses.” —Adam Zagajewski\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“His  dense verbal play, his allusive language, was always a way of  challenging official speech and ideology, normative language, normative  feeling.” —Edward Hirsch\u003cb\u003eRyszard Krynicki\u003c\/b\u003e, one of Poland’s most important  contemporary poets, was born in a labor camp in Sankt Valentin (Lower  Austria) in 1943. Since the 1960s, when he became known as one of the  poets of the New Wave, Krynicki has been associated with the democratic  opposition in Poland. As a result, he was subjected to censorship and  then banned completely from official publication between 1976 and 1980,  although he continued to publish with unofficial presses and, in the  case of \u003ci\u003eOur Life Grows\u003c\/i\u003e (1978), with the Paris émigré press  Kultura. After working for years as an editor in underground publishing  and running a private art gallery with his wife, Krystyna, in their  Poznań apartment, he founded the influential publishing house a5 in  1988; from the start, the press focused on contemporary Polish poetry,  including the works of Wisława Szymborska, Adam Zagajewski, and many  younger poets. Krynicki is also renowned as a translator of  German-language poets, including Nelly Sachs and Paul Celan. A recipient  of many prestigious literary awards, he was most recently awarded the  Zbigniew Herbert International Poetry Prize in 2015. He lives in Kraków.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAlissa Valles\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of the poetry books \u003ci\u003eOrphan Fire\u003c\/i\u003e (2008) and \u003ci\u003eAnastylosis\u003c\/i\u003e (2014) and the editor and cotranslator of Zbigniew Herbert’s \u003ci\u003eCollected Poems and Collected Prose\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAdam Michnik\u003c\/b\u003e is a Polish newspaper editor, writer, and historian. He was jailed by  the Communist government in 1968 and twice more in the 1980s and has  written extensively about postwar Eastern European politics and history,  life under a totalitarian regime, and moral and historical philosophy.","brand":"NYRB Poets","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44885316829413,"sku":"NP9781681371603","price":14.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781681371603.jpg?v=1767734330","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/our-life-grows-isbn-9781681371603","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}