Beast

Reviewing Charles S. Kraszewski's verse cycle Beast in Odra, Mieczyslaw Orski speaks of the cycle's "majesty, coupled with its large dose of refreshing irony and humor" such as one finds in the "grand narratives of the poetic art." He compares Kraszewski's poetic voice with that of John Ashberry. Readers of modern American poetry may find more similarities with the Jack Kerouac of the Duluoz Legend. Not solely because Kraszewski's Beast explores the familar, yet suddenly vanished culture of the ethnic enclaves of the 1960s Northeast, but also because of the haunting, incantatory rhythms of poems such as "Loveland Pass" and "Here is no god but Mammon," so redolent of the Book of Sketches and Big Sur at their hypnotic best. Charles S. Kraszewski is 2013 laureate of the Union of Polish Writers Abroad (London).