Astonishments : Selected Poems Of Anna Kamienska

Kamieska came of age during the horrors of the Nazi occupation of Poland and lived under the oppression of Communism. These experiences, and the sudden death of her husband, led her to engage with the Bible and the great religious thinkers of the 20th century.

Her poems record the struggles of a rational mind with religious faith, addressing loneliness and uncertainty in a direct, unsentimental manner. While exploring the meaning of loss and grief, and the yearning for love, Kamienska’s poetry still expresses a quiet humor and a pervasive sense of gratitude for human existence and for a myriad of creatures: hedgehogs, birds, and “young leaves willing to open up to the sun.”

In the quiet space of Kamieska’s poems “the tenderness of things enfolds you” and words speak as eloquently as the silence.