Dear Ms. Schubert
By Ewa Lipska
Translated from the Polish by Robin Davidson & Ewa Elżbieta Nowakowska
The first complete English translation of Ewa Lipska’s “Droga pani Schubert” poems.
Language
Dear Ms. Schubert, I’m writing you in
Polish. A strange tongue. It sticks to the palate.
It has to be translated, constantly,
into foreign languages. Sometimes it gives off
a dull smell and tastes like apathetic mustard.
Sometimes though, it relaxes in love.
Do you remember how dizzy our words were
when we ran along the beach, and rain
washed our mouths of the remnants of speech?
The Large Hadron Collider
Dear Ms. Schubert, because I believe in an afterlife, we’re bound to meet in the Large Hadron Collider. You’ll probably be a fraction of the number I’ll add to myself. The sum won’t require any explanation. It’s more or less what love equals. Minus disaster.
Ewa Lipska
Reviews
“Dear Ms. Schubert is an admirable addition to international literature, a gift to the English-speaking world.”
—L. Ali Khan, New York Journal of Books
“Written by a Mr. Butterfly, these brief, playful poems show the intimacies of love while maintaining deep cultural skepticism.”
—New York Times
Larger themes emerge for the reader who cares to gather clues, namely a chronotopic panorama of German-speaking culture, and of the multilingual and multiethnic ties of central Europeans to the German world. The panorama stretches over two centuries, examining culture from leisurely nineteenth-century philosophical pursuits to brutal twentieth-century mass murder and totalitarianism. . . The fascinating puzzle Lipska has put in front of us continues with the blurring of the boundary between prose and poetry. . . This is a revolutionary act, a democratization that anchors poetry in spoken and written nonliterary texts and gives it the rhythm of breathing. . .
—Alice-Catherine Carls, World Literature Today
“This poetry jumps and leaps and runs.”
—Adam Zagajewski
“Ewa Lipska doesn’t just use words in these terse and ironic poems—she also listens to how politicians, marketing executives, and so-called ordinary folk use them to express their fears and desires. This makes her both uncompromising and generous. Born ‘in a downpour of uncertainty,’ these magnificently translated poems engage with the present moment without losing sight of the timelessness of human kindness and love.”
—Piotr Florczyk
“Ewa Lipska is a poet of the first importance. Her signature style—terse, witty, with images that turn on a dime—is unmistakable. The translations in Dear Ms. Schubert succeed in conveying her controlled, understated tone, her playfulness, and her ability to astonish with a single unexpected image or word.”
—Bill Johnston
Translator Tuesdays, Embassy of Poland, U.S. July 13, 2020