Self-Portrait Essay & Criticism

Self-Portrait Critical Overview

Adam Kirsch writes in his review of Mysticism for Beginners that “the central problem of [Zagajewski's] poetry” is that “the mystical experience is not loquacious” because it is characterized by a “stillness.” Kirsch argues, “What yearns to be expressed, rather, is the experience of waiting for the sudden heightening of consciousness; waiting for it, or remembering it, or lacking it.” Kirsch determines that Zagajewski's goal is to write poetry “that is a concrete avenue to an invisible reality,” requiring him to experiment with “poetic strategies and . . . poetic evasions,” which “reveal a great deal about the possibilities of poetry today.”

Kirsch concludes that Zagajewski begins to answer the question “how can a poet—an intelligent, serious poet—write mystical verse now,” in a modern age when “the presumption, even the suggestion, of a mystical dimension to life can seem anachronistic, an evasion of the real and secular responsibilities of...
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