Title: Polonaise
Subtitle: Stories
First published: 1998
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.
Subjects: Polish Americans, Fiction, Polish-American literature
LC classification: PS3552.U399 P65 1998