Polonaise
Subtitle: stories
By: by Anthony Bukoski.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Southern Methodist University Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Dallas, Tex
Language: eng
Number of pages: 180
Description: The twelve stories in Bukoski's third collection are both a dirge and an homage to a passing way of life for the East End neighborhood of Superior, Wisconsin. "Hurry, our closing is imminent," a priest in the single remaining Catholic church exhorts a Polish emigre seaman at the start of a confession.

On the streets and docks of the world's most inland port, Bukoski's characters struggle to understand what went wrong in a city where everything is closing or decaying. Sailors return with diseases of body and soul, a frantic woman searches for her child lost almost a half-century ago, a self-deluded widower seeks love over the telephone, and a compulsive braggart shrinks in stature as his chest expands with the ever more elaborate lies he tells.
Table of contents: title: Pesthouse; title: Dry spell; title: The absolution of Hedda Borski; title: The korporal's polonaise; title: The tools of ignorance; title: Bird of passage; title: The world at war; title: Immigration and naturalization; title: Private Tomaszewski; title: The wood of such trees; title: The month that brings winter, or, How Mr. Truzynski carried Vietnam home with him; title: A concert of minor pieces.