Niewidzialna ráo1ka by Adam Zagajewski

the Sea/' "Two Continents," and "Windswept on the Land." Its pre dominant themes are celebration of the visual life and memories, and separation of the present from a former self and place. The reader enters into a world of riotous colors, universal landscapes in a densely packed array of such vivid imagery that, if taken in too quickly, threatens to overload the senses. The poet's eye, like a videographer's lens, soars over scenes of skies and seas and sails and storms, but not excluding the seacoast village and the solitary fisherman and the windswept farm, leaving an overwhelming impres sion of saturating sights that exhila rate the spirit. Sometimes the poet lingers in one place, becomes "the lighthouse, watching over the night that settles o'er the earth / . . . and strokes with mother hand along the cheek / of the surging coastline, the red hair of wavy roof tiles / the sea town sliding back into its own watery cradle / dreamingly telling of seven seas, five continents." It is a poetry that does not make us think so much as see in detail, here as a silent witness of the light's journey. It is perhaps safe to say that Hettinga's fame and popularity as a poet are due more to his pub lic performances as a kind of con temporary Bernlef, the blind Frisian bard of the 700s. To read his poetry, more romantic than postmodern in nature, is demanding. Sometimes the density of imagery, allusions, and symbolism obscures the mean ing. Often the convoluted syntax, the numerous neologisms, the breath lessly sprinting periodic sentences piled with modifiers require many rereadings for the sense underneath the sound. But one will surely discover that here is the voice of an original, gifted poet, several of whose works have been translated into Dutch, Ger man, French, Spanish, and English. Some of his readings are viewable on YouTube and available on CDs, including the bilingual CD (Frisian and English) It doarp /Always Ready. Tsj?bbe Hettinga is the recipient of many prestigious literary awards, including the Gysbert Japicx Prize. Recently he was commissioned to write the 2010 Gedichtendagbundel (Poetry day anthology), a small col lection with a print run of fifteen thousand copies, published to cele brate the Dutch and Flemish Nation al Poetry Day on January 28,2010. Henry /. Baron Calvin College Adam Zagajewski. Niewidzialna r?ka. Krakow. Znak. 2009.99 pages. 25.90 z\. isbn 978-83-240-1246-6 Niewidzialna r?ka (The invisible hand) is a uniquely harmonious volume. Adam Zagajewski's previous fears (of the encroachments of twentieth century history) and anxieties (regard ing where to belong, how to belong, and how to connect the past with the present) appear to be vanquished. The opening poem sets the tone for the volume: the building of a new hotel, finally compacted into "glass, concrete, / forgetting," calls forth not just nostalgic sadness?the elegiac note we have heard in previous vol umes^?but an unexpected moment of pure joy, the ecstatic note that is Zagajewski's trademark (see WIT, May 2005). This turn?when an elegy for the departed sights and sounds of childhood is miraculously transmuted into ecstasy?is a crucial feature of Zagajewski's latest work. This volume is grounded by the magnetic pull of two rivers, the western French Garonne and the Nota Bene The Island ?uintet RAYMOND RAMCHARtTAR Raymond Ramcharitar The Island Quintet PeepalTree This collection, a compilation of five short works byTrinidadian author Ramcharitar, "poses in fresh ways the still to be answered questions about island existence." * 3> * C' # * ? * m ? ; * ? * * * * ? * ? p[|^?Jjr ? * # ? * * ? ^ Sam Savage The Cry of the Sloth Coffee House Praised as "a work of great originality" by Philip Pullman, American author Savage's second novel follows four months in the life of an aspiring middle-American novelist during the Nixon era. August 201 0 WORLD LITERATURE IN REVIEW ^^ ^^^^ H eastern French Rh?ne. The handful of poems dedicated to them, as to lovers, chronicle the poet's travels up and down their lengths, affinriing their beauty and constancy. Yet Zagajewski is adept at stopping just short of senti mentality. These poems are unfailing ly tender yet not saccharine, warm yet not lachrymose

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