Notes

About the Book

Notes is Ryszard Kapuściński’s debut volume of poetry, published in 1986 — a lesser-known yet fascinating side of an author famous above all as a reporter. It turns out that the same man who described revolutions and the fall of empires also reached for verse to capture what is hardest to fit into prose.

Kapuściński’s poetry is spare, reflective and close to his reporter’s sensibility. In short, concentrated poems the author sets down impressions from his travels, images of people and places, and meditations on transience, solitude and the human condition. Many of these poems are lyrical snapshots — arrested moments in which the concreteness of an observation passes into a universal reflection on fate.

Notes allows us to see Kapuściński from a more intimate and personal angle. It complements his great books — proof that behind the reporter’s eye there also lay a poetic imagination, sensitive to the word and to what is fleeting. For readers who know the author only from his reportages, this volume can be a genuine discovery.

Themes

• The lyric of travel and memory
• Transience and solitude
• The human condition
• The reporter’s eye in verse

Format

Short, spare poems — lyrical snapshots from the author’s life and travels.