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Best of The New York Review, plus books, events, and other items of interest
July 24, 2025
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Best of The New York Review, plus books, events, and other items of interest
July 24, 2025
Current Issue
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The comparison between man and candle
Has been suggested then as now:
A flame is ignited
And in the end self-annihilates.This is libel. I am warning you.
I object.I am neither wax nor paraffin,
Not even self-steering stearin.
I am not a mold impaled by
A cord.I assume that I lose none of my essence
As I burn. I rather think
I expand, and when I expire
I will leave behind a terrible troveOf flammable material, un-
Suitable for burning. It will be
Volatile. Hard. Venomous.
Nutritious. Indifferent. I am warning you!
Witold Wirpsza (1918–1985) was a Polish poet who published some twenty collections and lived in Austria and West Berlin after 1966. (April 2025)
Ann Frenkel and Gwido Zlatkes’s translations from the Polish include the autobiographyRiding History to Death by Karol Modzelewski,Against the Devil in History: Poems, Short Stories, Essays, Fragments by Aleksander Wat, andApotheosis of Music, the first English translation of poems by Wirpsza, which will be published this month. (April 2025)
Gwido Zlatkes and Ann Frenkel’s translations from the Polish include the autobiographyRiding History to Death by Karol Modzelewski,Against the Devil in History: Poems, Short Stories, Essays, Fragments by Aleksander Wat, andApotheosis of Music, the first English translation of poems by Wirpsza, which will be published this month. (April 2025)
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