Lidia Kosk, Meadows of Memory, selected and translated by Danuta E. Kosk-Kosicka, Apprentice House Press, 2019, ISBN 9781627202336, 70 pages, $12.99
Meadows of Memory: Poems and Prose by Lidia Kosk, Reviewed by Burgi Zenhaeusern
Lidia Kosk has published many books of poetry and prose during her long career as a writer, educator, lawyer, and photographer. Her work has been widely translated and has even been set to music. Together with her daughter, poet and translator Danuta E. Kosk-Kosicka, her poetry was introduced to an English speaking readership. Meadows of Memory is her most recent collection and their most recent collaboration. As in Kosk’s earlier work, these poems draw their depth from her lyricism combined with a concrete diction throughout. Meadows of Memory begins with a couple of evocative prose pieces introducing the reader to the collection’s themes of childhood and its landscape, a sense of precariousness, time passing, and love, to then launch into the first poems’ acts of remembering.
The choice of “meadows” as the scenery of memory may signal to the reader an emphasis on nostalgia with a hint of the pastoral. The collection’s tone is indeed often elegiac. A clear-eyed perceptiveness prevents its poetry from sliding into romanticizing the past though. Delving further into the poems, it becomes evident that they also demonstrate an effort to integrate haunting memories into the flux of personal history, as when in “Memory Tapes,” the speaker says “I want to free myself of childhood war memories.” The poem “Dream or Not a Dream” illustrates in succinct lines how these memories are ever ready to materialize, how they keep recurring, while a longing for even momentary forgetfulness permeates the poem:
……….A street
……….A sidewalk. Or perhaps the earth?
……….Something overpowers me
……….Immobilizes
……….Black clouds above
……….Dread!
……….Suddenly the skies open
……….A big, black horse falls down
……….In front of me
……….The earth trembles
……….Something bursts
……….The breathing… My breath returns
……….The nightmare slides off my chest
……….Calm
………………..Black horse…
………………..Danger…
………………..Back in my childhood
………………..A black mare, my Karuńka, jumping across the river
………………..Saved me
…..,,.,I wake up
……….I wake up to life
The quietly haunting “I Patted a Hedgehog” foregrounds this yearning for the past to stay in the past, for being absorbed into an unthinking here and now, and yet, the scenery is only seemingly idyllic (the poem is set in 1980 Gransee in the former GDR):
……….At the outskirts of a German village
……….like a Landschaft embroidery
……….a hedgehog paused as if frozen in a frame
……….in his armor of upright spikes
……….which he gently laid down upon my touch
……….I patted a hedgehog at the outskirts of a dusk-wrapped
……….German village. In the background, green
……….fields sown with wheat, woods where tanks
……….stood at the ready—post-war props
……….with soldiers from the East, guarding
……….I patted a hedgehog, his spikes at rest
……….without awareness deeper
……….than the mood of a summer’s evening
……….idyllic landscape and the silence in which
……….people can peacefully go to sleep
The hedgehog being stroked, an action emphasized by the use of anaphora, vividly embodies difficult memories alluded to in the poem, i.e. the need to keep patting them down, and also a certain danger in recalling them.
In the deeply felt “The Yellow Pitcher,” a homely household item embodies as well as triggers memories of childhood and family, i.e. memento and metaphor simultaneously. This is one of the collection’s more richly illustrated poems and one of its more elegiac too. Here its first stanza:
……….The pitcher has been with me for decades
……….a yellow pitcher from my childhood on the hilltop
……….crept upon by vapors from the bog-meadows with sharp grass
……….blades hindering access to our little alders
……….which bore witness to my sisters’ and my defenseless, heroic efforts
……….their moist leaves soothed bloodied legs
In the course of the poem the reader is brought back to harsh winters, cricket-filled summers, the kitchen of the poet’s childhood home, and farm life. The memories of this poem are welcome. They denote safety, wholesomeness, and shelter, which is reinforced by the poem’s ending:
……….Leaving the hilltop house, I took with me the yellow pitcher
……….with its handle like a treble clef
……….and preserved inside, music that we all loved
While “The Yellow Pitcher” transports the reader to childhood memories “Jasmine,” in a few terse lines, expresses nostalgia for a past love or more generally for youth and its promise:
……….The fair night’s blossom
……….the scent of rain
……….dogs’ impassioned calls
……….my fear
……….under the spell
……….of storms of May
……….Oh, to happen again
……….upon that night
……….embedded in
……….jasmine scent
Remembering in Meadows of Memory is at once yearned for and feared, sometimes nostalgic, and at others overpowering as in “the waves swell / carry away your image / and the ground from under my feet” (“I See You”). Remembering is “longing,” “mourning,” and “sorrow” as these stanza headings in “And Now Only” state. “And Now Only” is a list poem that also points the reader to subjects occurring elsewhere in the collection:
……….longing
……….……….for a pheasant calling
……….……….frogs croaking
……….……….bees buzzing in white clover
……….……….dew drops on grass blades
……….……….sky-blue flax in bloom
……….……….wind enraptured with the scent
……….……….of ripening grains
……….……….and sun-warmed thyme
……….……….for the sight of the hill
……….……….now overgrown with the weeds of time
……….……….and human malice
……….……….branches of alders
……….……….marching from the river valley
……….……….like Birnam Wood
……….……….against fate
……….mourning
……….……….for the ruins of home
……….……….now protected only
……….……….by splinters of the ceiling
……….……….energy imprisoned
……….……….under a patina of mildew
……….……….in the wounded cupboard
……….……….standing sentry
……….……….at wall remnants
……….……….guardians of
……….……….memory
……….sorrow
……….……….for lost lineage
……….……….a table the hue of ripe cherries
……….……….that guarded the family lore
……….……….confided to paper
……….……….secrets in black ink
……….……….for the book of canticles
……….……….opening with a song
……….……….When the morning lights arise
……….……….and closing with
……….……….All our daily cares
The act of remembering in Meadows of Memory becomes itself a “meadow” to be explored and questioned for the speaker and reader alike. Remembering is a reconciling that never ends.
© Burgi Zenhaeusern, Lidia Kosk, and Danuta E. Kosk-Kosicka
Burgi Zenhaeusern‘s chapbook Behind Normalcy, winner of the 2019 Harriss Poetry Prize, is forthcoming from CityLit Press. Her work appears in Diagram, Zone 3, Oversound, American Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. Find more at burgizenhaeusern.com
Lidia Kosk is the author of thirteen books of poetry and prose, and two anthologies. Her collaboration with Danuta E. Kosk-Kosicka resulted in two bilingual volumes: Niedosyt/Reshapings and Słodka woda, słona woda/Sweet Water, Salt Water. The Japanese edition of the latter appeared in 2016. Kosk’s most recent book, Szklana góra/Glass Mountain, edited by Danuta, features renditions of her poem in twenty-two languages, with recordings in all the languages. A song, written to the words of “Szklana góra” by Virginia-based composer Sal Ferrantelli, performed by soprano Laura G. Kafka-Price, premiered in May 2019 at the Arts Club of Washington. Translated into choral compositions by Philip Olsen her “Polish Triptych” poems have been performed in several countries. Lidia resides in Warsaw, Poland, where she leads poetry workshops and the Poets’ Theater. Her website: http://lidiakosk.wordpress.com/
Danuta E. Kosk-Kosicka is a prize-winning poet, translator, and photographer. She is the translator for four books by Lidia Kosk. Her translations of poems by Maryland Poets Laureate—Lucille Clifton, Josephine Jacobsen, and Linda Pastan—have been published in Poland; her translations of poems by Grzegorz Białkowski, Ernest Bryll, Lidia Kosk, and Wisława Szymborska have appeared in over 70 publications in the USA. Her work has appeared in Notre Dame Review, Spillway, Subtropics, and Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. She is the author of two collections (Oblige the Light, CityLit Press, 2015; Face Half-Illuminated, Apprentice House, 2015). Her website: http://danutakk.wordpress.com/
The Loch Raven Review 