Twelve Stations

"Although the past is a constant theme in Rózycki's work, the present erupts with no less urgency . . . he witnesses the ant-like unimportance of human beings viewed from a cosmic perspective."—Helen Vendler, Harvard University

The hero of the mock poem, Grandson, leaves his hometown of Opole, in the western Polish region of Silesia, to organize a family reunion in the Ukraine where his family had lived before World War II—before being forcibly resettled along with many thousands of other Po...