Title: Słona sztuka
Description: It is a collection of poems comprising Andrzej Słomianowski's poetical works that were written in the years 1994 - 2010. It contains short as well as long poems which deal, among others, with the author's attempts to assimilate elements of his experience of living almost 40 years outside Poland - the last 30 years in Germany. The title could be rendered into English as "Salty Art" and it refers centrally to author's concerns. Writing poems, like creating any art, is, Słomianowski believes, hard work and hard work means sweat, and sweat - as we know - is salty. "Salty Art", a poem giving the title to the whole collection is dedicated to the great Polish poet Tadeusz Różewicz. In one of his poems Różewicz writes that his right hand is nothing more than a workman's tool and that he uses it to write poems and to dry the sweat on his brow, while working on poems, i. e.while writing and then for months painstakingly correcting them.. Słomianowski is a traditional poet, often availing himself of a regualr stanza, ordered rhytmic patterns and an easily discernible formal structure. Apart from Polish poets Tadeusz Różewicz and Zbigniew Herbert, his greatest debt is to T. S. Eliot, the poet, the critic, the essayist and the thinker. Słomianowski admires many contemporary poets writing in English and in German, most notably Geoffrey Hill, Seamus Heaney and Hans Magnus Enzensberger. This admiration is visible in "Słona sztuka" / "Salty Art". From poets writing in other languages Słomianowski is indebted to a contemporary Norwegian poet Jan Erik Vold, whose work he has translated into Polish. Life as we live it, culture, history, civilisation (which Ezra Pound once called "botched") are Słomianowski's main themes and they are all present in this collection.
People: T. S. Eliot (1888-1965), Geoffrey Hill, Seamus Heaney, Hans Magnus Enzensberger (1929-2022), Tadeusz Różewicz, Zbigniew Herbert