Goodbye to Adam Zagajewski: the “poet of September 11” is dead

Polish poet Adam zagajewski, one of the most representative voices of the genre in his country, where he is one of the most famous contemporary authors as well as in the United States where he was known as the “poet of September 11” for a text on the attacks, he died on the last Sunday at the age of 75.

Poet, novelist, essayist and translator, Zagajewski was born in 1945 in Lviv, in what is now Ukraine. He was a prominent member of the Polish New Wave literary movement, inspired by the crackdown on a wave of student protests in Poland in March 1968.

In 1982, he went into exile in Paris and then in the United States. Although he traveled frequently for his work at the University of Chicago, the poet relocated to Poland in 2002, specifically to Krakow, where he ultimately died, according to the news agency. AFP.

He earned the nickname “poet of September 11” when the magazine The New Yorker chose one of his poems –Try to praise the mutilated world– for the last page of his special on the attacks against the United States in 2001.

Some of his titles translated into Spanish by the publishing house Acantilado are the books of poetry Tierra del Fuego, Desire, Antennas, Invisible Hand Yes Asymmetry (2017); attempts Two cities, in defense of fervor, solidarity and loneliness and Reread Rilke. In 2019, the same label released a special autobiography titled A slight exaggeration.

For his extensive work, the Polish writer has received numerous accolades, such as the Princess of Asturias Prize for Spanish Letters, the Neustadt National Literature Prize, the Freedom Prize and a scholarship from the Guggenheim Foundation.

Source: Telam

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