Hello All,

I read this Poem of the Day since our last meeting, and didn’t take it
in,fully. Including the dateline at the bottom: Berkeley, 1968.
I didn’t know till I read Milosz’s bio that it was a teaching
offer from Berkeley that allowed his 1968 defection to the US from the
Communist oppression of Poland.

If you happen not to be familiar with this poet’s work and life story
you are missing a 20th century miracle in the visions and heart of this
surviving witness of
the brutal oppression of his country and its people.

Much of this poet’s life story , Polish Catholic , he lived through the
Nazi occupation of Poland, worked underground in the Polish Resistance and
narrowly escaped torture and death
from, first the Nazis and then the Communists, the choice was to die or be
neutered under equally blood-soaked reigns of terror .

Most relevant to our group perhaps is this speech Milosz made
after his defection to America.
I will try to excerpt some quotes:
He wrote in Polish, often translated his own work, and of course wrote
as well in English.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/czeslaw-milosz?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Poem%20of%20the%20Day&utm_content=Daily%20Poem%20of%20the%20Day+CID_c54b442171e4de6b561bcdebec3a3bef&utm_source=Campaign%20Monitor&utm_term=Biography

We are presented with a vivid picture of the forms of concealment, of inner
transformation, of the sudden bolt to conversion, of the cleavage of man
into two.”

“I have rejected the new faith(the Russian communist party’s takeover of
Poland)because the practice of the lie is one of its principal commandments
and socialist realism is nothing more than a different name for a lie.”

*I*n* The Witness of Poetry *(1983)*,* Milosz stresses the importance of
his nation’s cultural heritage and history in shaping his work. “My corner
of Europe,” he states, “owing to the extraordinary and lethal events that
have been occurring there, comparable only to violent earthquakes, affords
a peculiar perspective. As a result, all of us who come from those parts
appraise poetry slightly differently than do the majority of my audience,
for we tend to view it as a witness and participant in one of mankind’s
major transformations.”

Milosz articulated a fundamental difference in the role of poetry in the
capitalist West and the communist East. Western poetry, as Alfred Kazin
wrote in the *New York Times Book Review,* is “‘alienated’ poetry, full of
introspective anxiety.” But because of the dictatorial nature of communist
government, poets in the East cannot afford to be preoccupied with
themselves. They are drawn to write of the larger problems of their
society. “A peculiar fusion of the individual and the historical took
place,” Milosz wrote in *The Witness of Poetry,* “which means that events
burdening a whole community are perceived by a poet as touching him in a
most personal manner. Then poetry is no longer alienated.”

———- Forwarded message ———
From: Poetry Foundation <[email protected]>
Date: Fri, Jan 20, 2017 at 10:08 AM
Subject: Poem of the Day: Incantation
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>

Having trouble viewing this email? Click here
(http://thepoetryfoundation.cmail19.com/t/r-e-ykdyjug-hlkldhzyd-r/) to view
it in your web browser.
[image: Poetry Foundation][image: Poem of the Day]
1 / 20 / 2017

Poem of the Day: Incantation
(http://thepoetryfoundation.cmail19.com/t/r-l-ykdyjug-hlkldhzyd-i/) by
Czeslaw Milosz
Human reason is beautiful and invincible.
No bars, no barbed wire, no pulping of books,
No sentence of banishment can prevail against it.
It establishes the universal ideas in language,
And guides our hand so we write Truth and Justice
With capital letters, lie and oppression with small.
It puts what should be above things as they are,
Is an enemy of despair and a friend of hope.
It does not know Jew from Greek or slave from master,
Giving us the estate of the world to manage.
It saves austere and transparent phrases
From the filthy discord of tortured words.
It says that everything is new under the sun,
Opens the congealed fist of the past.
Beautiful and very young are Philo-Sophia
And poetry, her ally in the service of the good.
As late as yesterday Nature celebrated their birth,
The news was brought to the mountains by a unicorn and an echo.
Their friendship will be glorious, their time has no limit.
Their enemies have delivered themselves to destruction.

*Berkeley, 1968*

Czeslaw Milosz, “Incantation” from *The Collected Poems: 1931-1987*.
Copyright © 1988 by Czeslaw Milosz Royalties, Inc. Used by permission of
HarperCollins Publishers.

Source: *The Collected Poems: 1931-1987**(The Ecco Press, 1988)*
(http://thepoetryfoundation.cmail19.com/t/r-l-ykdyjug-hlkldhzyd-d/)
Czeslaw Milosz

Biography
(http://thepoetryfoundation.cmail19.com/t/r-l-ykdyjug-hlkldhzyd-h/)
More poems by this author
(http://thepoetryfoundation.cmail19.com/t/r-l-ykdyjug-hlkldhzyd-k/)
——————————

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(http://thepoetryfoundation.forwardtomyfriend.com/r-hlkldhzyd-20E06649-ykdyjug-l-y)

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(http://thepoetryfoundation.cmail19.com/t/r-l-ykdyjug-hlkldhzyd-p/)

—

[email protected].

Hello All,

I read this Poem of the Day since our last meeting, and didn’t take it
in,fully. Including the dateline at the bottom: Berkeley, 1968.
I didn’t know till I read Milosz’s bio that it was a teaching
offer from Berkeley that allowed his 1968 defection to the US from the
Communist oppression of Poland.

If you happen not to be familiar with this poet’s work and life story
you are missing a 20th century miracle in the visions and heart of this
surviving witness of
the brutal oppression of his country and its people.

Much of this poet’s life story , Polish Catholic , he lived through the
Nazi occupation of Poland, worked underground in the Polish Resistance and
narrowly escaped torture and death
from, first the Nazis and then the Communists, the choice was to die or be
neutered under equally blood-soaked reigns of terror .

Most relevant to our group perhaps is this speech Milosz made
after his defection to America.
I will try to excerpt some quotes:
He wrote in Polish, often translated his own work, and of course wrote
as well in English.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/czeslaw-milosz?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Poem%20of%20the%20Day&utm_content=Daily%20Poem%20of%20the%20Day+CID_c54b442171e4de6b561bcdebec3a3bef&utm_source=Campaign%20Monitor&utm_term=Biography

We are presented with a vivid picture of the forms of concealment, of inner
transformation, of the sudden bolt to conversion, of the cleavage of man
into two.”

“I have rejected the new faith(the Russian communist party’s takeover of
Poland)because the practice of the lie is one of its principal commandments
and socialist realism is nothing more than a different name for a lie.”

*I*n* The Witness of Poetry *(1983)*,* Milosz stresses the importance of
his nation’s cultural heritage and history in shaping his work. “My corner
of Europe,” he states, “owing to the extraordinary and lethal events that
have been occurring there, comparable only to violent earthquakes, affords
a peculiar perspective. As a result, all of us who come from those parts
appraise poetry slightly differently than do the majority of my audience,
for we tend to view it as a witness and participant in one of mankind’s
major transformations.”

Milosz articulated a fundamental difference in the role of poetry in the
capitalist West and the communist East. Western poetry, as Alfred Kazin
wrote in the *New York Times Book Review,* is “‘alienated’ poetry, full of
introspective anxiety.” But because of the dictatorial nature of communist
government, poets in the East cannot afford to be preoccupied with
themselves. They are drawn to write of the larger problems of their
society. “A peculiar fusion of the individual and the historical took
place,” Milosz wrote in *The Witness of Poetry,* “which means that events
burdening a whole community are perceived by a poet as touching him in a
most personal manner. Then poetry is no longer alienated.”

———- Forwarded message ———
From: Poetry Foundation <[email protected]>
Date: Fri, Jan 20, 2017 at 10:08 AM
Subject: Poem of the Day: Incantation
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>

Having trouble viewing this email? Click here
(http://thepoetryfoundation.cmail19.com/t/r-e-ykdyjug-hlkldhzyd-r/) to view
it in your web browser.
[image: Poetry Foundation][image: Poem of the Day]
1 / 20 / 2017

Poem of the Day: Incantation
(http://thepoetryfoundation.cmail19.com/t/r-l-ykdyjug-hlkldhzyd-i/) by
Czeslaw Milosz
Human reason is beautiful and invincible.
No bars, no barbed wire, no pulping of books,
No sentence of banishment can prevail against it.
It establishes the universal ideas in language,
And guides our hand so we write Truth and Justice
With capital letters, lie and oppression with small.
It puts what should be above things as they are,
Is an enemy of despair and a friend of hope.
It does not know Jew from Greek or slave from master,
Giving us the estate of the world to manage.
It saves austere and transparent phrases
From the filthy discord of tortured words.
It says that everything is new under the sun,
Opens the congealed fist of the past.
Beautiful and very young are Philo-Sophia
And poetry, her ally in the service of the good.
As late as yesterday Nature celebrated their birth,
The news was brought to the mountains by a unicorn and an echo.
Their friendship will be glorious, their time has no limit.
Their enemies have delivered themselves to destruction.

*Berkeley, 1968*

Czeslaw Milosz, “Incantation” from *The Collected Poems: 1931-1987*.
Copyright © 1988 by Czeslaw Milosz Royalties, Inc. Used by permission of
HarperCollins Publishers.

Source: *The Collected Poems: 1931-1987**(The Ecco Press, 1988)*
(http://thepoetryfoundation.cmail19.com/t/r-l-ykdyjug-hlkldhzyd-d/)
Czeslaw Milosz

Biography
(http://thepoetryfoundation.cmail19.com/t/r-l-ykdyjug-hlkldhzyd-h/)
More poems by this author
(http://thepoetryfoundation.cmail19.com/t/r-l-ykdyjug-hlkldhzyd-k/)
——————————

Forward to a friend
(http://thepoetryfoundation.forwardtomyfriend.com/r-hlkldhzyd-20E06649-ykdyjug-l-y)

Find us on Facebook
(http://thepoetryfoundation.cmail19.com/t/r-l-ykdyjug-hlkldhzyd-o/)

Follow us on Twitter
(http://thepoetryfoundation.cmail19.com/t/r-l-ykdyjug-hlkldhzyd-b/)
Discover more poetry

Find poems by subject, occasion, or holiday.
(http://thepoetryfoundation.cmail19.com/t/r-l-ykdyjug-hlkldhzyd-n/)
Sign up

Receive the latest poems and news from the Poetry Foundation and *Poetry*
magazine.
(http://thepoetryfoundation.cmail19.com/t/r-l-ykdyjug-hlkldhzyd-p/)

—

[email protected].