Firebird

“The poems in Firebird sound startlingly contemporary…both sharp-sensed and sharp-tongued. Firebird, which contains no juvenilia, cannot be seen as presenting Ginczanka as an object of study…it leans into her anger.” —Lily Meyer, Poetry Foundation

“Alissa Valles managed to translate Ginczanka’s poems in Firebird in a way they sound startlingly contemporary…both sharp-sensed and sharp-tongued…Ginczanka’s linguistic exuberance and invention—reminiscent now of Marina Tsvetaeva, now of Marianne Moore or Mina Loy—are as exhilarating as the passionate fusion of the physical world and the world of ideas she advocated in her work.” —The Polish Book Institute’s Found in Translation award 

“The brief, cataclysmic life of Zuzanna Ginczanka would be enough to draw English-language readers to this compelling volume. But Ginczanka’s poems speak for themselves in Alissa Valles’s thrilling translations. Should there have been a longer life and more poems? Of course. ‘I leave no heirs,’ Ginczanka writes. Not so. Her ‘magnificent estate’ returns to life in Valles’s inspired versions.” —Clare Cavanagh