Stanisław Kalina Jaglarz

- Poland -

Stanisław Kalina Jaglarz, poet, author of the poetry books: „gościć sójki” (published by Wydawnictwo Biblioteki Śląskiej in 2022), which was nominated to the Wisława Szymborska Award and the Silesius Poetry Award and “zajęczy żar” (published by Wydawnictwo Warstwy in 2024).


HEAR THE FOREST SINGING

ON THE POETRY OF STANISŁAW KALINA JAGLARZ

By Natalia Rybczak

 

Stanisław Kalina Jaglarz, born in 1991 in Katowice, is a Polish poet and songwriter, currently living in Beskid Wyspowy. He was nominated for prestigious literary awards, such as the Wislawa Szymborska Award and the Wroclaw Silesius Poetry Prize for his debut book “gościć sójki” ("to host jays."). In 2024, he published his second book, entitled “zajęczy żar" ("hare's heat").

 

In Jaglarz's poetry, the senses are intertwined quite like the roots of trees, creating a dense and multidimensional web of sensations. Both 'to host jays' and 'hare heart' allow for the reproduction of stimuli, and the process of observing forest life seems endless. Each line slowly moves towards the next experience, creating the dense, organic fabric of the poem, each excised detail has its place, contributing to the continuous expansion of the forest landscape. A dilating pupil, a wet fur, a fruit ripening in the hand – these images, however, are inevitably viewed through the anthropocentric lens that is the only perspective available for humans. Although the emphasis is shifted to life in the forest and to the everyday life that takes place in the midst of natural processes, the path to non-anthropocentric understanding remains unattainable, in spite of the desire to be able to "see from the other side". Despite our belonging to the natural world, Jaglarz recognizes our separateness from it, the differences in the ,,language of unknown syntax and inflections", which makes our communication with nature achievable, but always, to some extent, incomplete and imperfect. Jaglarz, however, is not concerned with locating a secret bridge to the natural world – we have long been part of it. The possibility of communicating with nature in Jaglarz's work does not flow from words or intellectual constructs, but rather from the possibility to remain silent with the world, of growing together and growing into it. Silence and being with nature become the primary form of communication, situated beyond speech. In this context, understanding nature is not an intellectual process, but rather an existential experience – an act of blending into nature and being part of it. ”For a long time animals have been guiding humans”, Jaglarz will eventually say.

 

In his poems, Jaglarz primarily adopts a strategy of sincerity, uncompromisingly tying together images of nature full of beauty and horror. These pictures are authentic in their unpredictability, their ferocity, and their ability to inspire and infuse terror with the omnipresent death. Jaglarz, however, does not show only death in the midst of life, but also death growing out of life. This is a poetry of tangible things, and therefore impermanent things, prone to passing, and therefore paradoxically eternal, subject only (and as much as) to transformation. Circular, after all, is time, a tree core and a fingerprint. Death, in its most mundane form, becomes not only visible in Jaglarz's poetry, but also tangible – it protrudes from behind the leaves, merges with the presence of animals, lurks in buckets filled with rainwater. It ceases to be merely a biological necessity and begins to represent something much deeper – a destruction that disrupts the harmonious rhythm of nature. It is no longer a death that results from the natural order of things, but rather a problem that is the result of disruption – as Jaglarz points out: "someone is rummaging with a knife in the belly of the forest". As in Małgorzata Lebda's poetry, death remains inextricably intertwined with the natural world.

 

Ultimately, it is poetry that spreads like a vine, full of relentless words and sentences unconstrained by punctuation, created by verses that spread in all directions. This is not to say, however, that the sprawling phrase is unrestrained. The poems move from one to the next as fluidly as a frame in a film changes, one image hooking onto the next, one link pulling the next. In the second part of 'to host jays', entitled “pogranicze”, there is a noticeable change in atmosphere. The forest, previously shown as a place full of life and death in a natural cycle, becomes an alien and hostile space, dominated by external forces – soldiers, border guards and the refugees themselves. Jaglarz, despite the risk of falling into pathos or moral doubts about embracing the refugees' perspective, successfully avoids these pitfalls. By focusing on the material aspects of the surrounding world – footprints, sounds, the fragility of cornfields – the poet creates images that are full of concreteness and tangibility, reflecting the reality of life on the border.

 

In the mythological registers of Jaglarz's poetry, between forest moss and disheveled fields, there is also a place for the human body. Even though the human subject does not organize the poems, but rather moves through them, it is the human subject who attempts to go 'beyond himself' into nature. Ultimately, Jaglarz's poetry is above all an attempt to meet with something – not only with animals, but rather with the world in its purest, unhindered form. About being together with nature, even when it is terrifying. In these moss-covered forests, it is the carnality in the broadest sense of the word, made possible by the skin “from which the world grows”, the bark, the chitin or the soft fur, that ultimately unites man with nature. A corporeality that, by making touch and proximity possible, also fundamentally creates vulnerability and conditions death. The most solid community we can build with the world is, in Jaglarz's work, created by suffering, which transcends species differences, by suffering that unites.

More about the poet

Poetry

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