 | Biuro Literackie
Wrocław 2007
160x215
48 pages
paperback
ISBN: 97-883-60602-29-4
Translation rights: Andrzej Sosnowski |
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Andrzej SosnowskiAfter the Rainbow
"After the Rainbow", Andrzej Sosnowski’s latest book of poetry, could just as well be entitled "The New World For Beginners". Sosnowski takes us to the world “after the rainbow”, in other words after dreams of harmony have been compromised and the myth of the shattered Commandment tablets has lost its value. Earlier he took us on a journey to the place "where the end of the rainbow doesn’t touch the ground", because that was the title of his previous book.
As we read "After the Rainbow" we are in a completely alien space: a pharmacological and technical one, disorted and “on drugs”, where a rocket is sent to the sun powered by a shot of heroin. Generally the filter of the spontaneous tradition of dada means that in the post-rainbow world the subject’s sensory detectors go crazy, and the Self must learn to register what is around him and inside him in a different way. The transfers of information, bodily experiences and smells are different, and the sense of reality is heightened, as if on amphetamines. In this way "After the Rainbow" could be regarded as a science-fiction book. It features a literally cosmic landscape, the lucid metaphor of which could be a nuclear catastrophe, for instance, and it presents the post-human Self, leaving the city, village or housing block, abandoning man’s natural environment and going out into a state of weightlessness. The world of the future that lies open before us is provocative and distracting, but also amusing: we no longer know anything, and everything, from the simplest elements, has to be set up anew, without any context or cognitive foundations.
This is a superb, hypnotising book: it’s very thin, but saying anything about it requires talking about lots of things at once, including theology, metaphysics, astronomy, computer games, love, betrayal and obsession. So if anyone were interested in what might result from a cross between the work of Philip K. Dick, J.G. Ballard and Ray Bradbury with speeded-up language set at its highest register, they should read "After the Rainbow" right away.
- Anna Kałuża
Andrzej Sosnowski (born 1959) is a poet who lectures on American literature at Warsaw University.
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