Continued: Stories from a Road Less Traveled

By Piotr Sommer

Book Overview

Spontaneous, colloquial, and anti-conventional verse from a celebrated Polish writer .

Continued is a selection of poems by Piotr Sommer, spanning his career to date. A kind of poetic utterance, these "talk poems" are devoid of any singsong quality yet faithfully preserve all the melodies and rhythms of colloquial speech. Events and objects of ordinary, everyday life are related and described by the speaker in a deliberately deadpan manner. Yet a closer look at the language he uses, with all its ironic inflections and subtle "intermeanings," reveals that the poem's "message" should be identified more with the way it is spoken than with what it says. The poems in this volume were translated into English with the help of other notable poets, writers, and translators, including John Ashbery, D.J. Enright, and Douglas Dunn.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 081956768X
• ISBN13: 9780819567680
• Release Date: April 2005
• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.6" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 18 years and up

Customer Reviews

Short Poems, Very Moving

Sommer's poems prove that words - words! - can make you fall in love. I only wish I could turn my own day-to-day memories into such touching and wryly funny vignettes. The poems are short, and not intimidating, yet they go deep. Definitely worth reading, even if you usually don't read poetry.