On the Crossroads of Asia and Europe

Poetry, Prose. Translated from the Polish and with an introduction by Daniel Bourne, not in bilingual edition. "Here at last we have a generous selection of Tomasz Jastrun's poems and prose chronicling the disintegration of Poland, and celebrating the unlikely survival of the human spirit." (--John Witte) Born in 1950, Jastrun writes a poetry that is both politically and sensually aware, urgent both in its content and in its form: short lines that push the reader forward towards the next line, the next event, the next idea. Naomi Shihab Nye characterizes these texts as "crucial, empowering work;" these are poems that respond to unthinkable human atrocities in thinking, human ways. "This minefield was laid/Before I was born/On the edge of some prehistoric ocean/In a war of words against other words/Struggling in vain to touch God." (from "Uncertain Ground")