The Art of Trust
By Molly Sutton Kiefer, Poetry Editor
"I hear Rain Taxi is changing its name to Snow Taxi," Adam Zagajewski deadpanned before taking a sip of water at Saturday's reading. Zagajewski, the University of Minnesota's most recent Edelstein-Keller visiting writer, is an award-winning poet and essayist hailing from Poland. He also spends ten weeks of the year in Chicago, where he teaches at the University of Chicago in a program called the Committee on Social Thought. This is after spending eighteen autumns in Texas, where he taught in the University of Houston's MFA program.
It's been a glorious three days for this budding poet, who managed to pack in many Zagajewski-themed events for the week: Thursday was an interview, which will appear in dislocate issue 6 (and, perhaps, a teaser on contamination is forthcoming), a classroom visit to a poetry workshop, and dinner with the poet, professors in the program, and two other MFA students; Friday was lunch with the MFAs and a manuscript conference; and Saturday, the conclusion: driving the poet in my ramshackle car to the Twin Cities Book Festival, put together by Minnesota's very own Rain Taxi.
Reading Zagajewski in preparation for his visit and interview, I began to wonder at the fact that all his work is translated and yet he is so eloquent in speaking. I learned Zagajewski trusts his translators implicitly, and while he reads mainly in English to English audiences, he has little hand in the actual word choice but lets his main translator, Claire Cavanaugh, take the reigns. Zagajewski said a translator is "someone who must master the delicate layers of the language" and at the readings, the poems feel no less his own. Similarly, he does not write poetry in English but has been known to write essays in English, including his introduction to Edward Snow's translations of Rilke.
Zagajewski's views of poetry are hopeful, and he encouraged all the MFAs he encountered to find their own voices. He told us to "protect that candle" and remember two things: be patient and believe in yourself. He recounted a call from fellow poet Czeslaw Milosz, who after winning the Nobel Prize asked Zagajewski, "Tell me, have I ever written a good poem?" Oh, self-doubt. Zagajewski's message was one of trust--yourself, your voice, your craft.