On Centaurs and Other Poems by Zuzanna Ginczanka

On Centaurs and Other Poems by Zuzanna Ginczanka, translated from Polish by Alex Braslavsky / ISBN 9781954218109 / 256-page paperback published in 2023 by World Poetry Books *** “To read Zuzanna Ginczanka is to witness—through the merciless gun barrel of history—the vanishing of a visionary, surreal world. A poet of a tragic biography, Ginczanka sings history with unparalleled sublimity, irony, and anguish.”- Valzhyna Mort The first selected volume in English of Zuzanna Ginczanka, a visionary Polish-Ukrainian-Jewish poet of the inter-war years whose life was cut short by the Holocaust. “Zuzanna Ginczanka’s On Centaurs is a gorgeous and important book, overdue in English. Openings like ‘Electricity, yellowish’ and ‘(Today childhood came to me unraveling)’ launch mystical, sensual quests through a lost world. Alex Braslavsky has translated each of these quests exquisitely.”- Jennifer Croft “To enter the cosmology of Zuzanna Ginczanka’s poetry is to rediscover a sense of wonder, to gain new eyes through which to view the world. Something miraculous shines through these texts, even in their most tragic moments. From the early poems to the unprecedented On Centaurs and on to the haunting final texts, Alex Braslavsky dexterously conveys the intricacies of Ginczanka’s grammar and sensuous imagery in a masterful translation. This is a collection that will not quickly be forgotten.”- Kareem James Abu-Zeid “Alex Braslavsky has given us a great gift in bringing into English the magical poetry of Zuzanna Ginczanka. These deeply personal, plain-spoken yet enigmatic poems—sensual, playful, filled with longing, fragrant with lilac and mint and violet—are so very lovely, and so very different from other pre-war Polish writing of the period. At long last this beautiful, unique voice can be heard by English-language readers.”- Bill Johnston