The text was presented at a literary session devoted to Guillaume Apollinaire in Przemyśl (Poland), at the PRZEMYSL POETIC SPRING on 9th of June, 2005 (in Polish) and in Paris (France) on 18th May, 2007, at the session on Apollinaire "A Late Lunch with Guillaume Apollinaire" led by Heather Hartley, poet and Paris editor of TIN HOUSE Magazine (in English)

Only to very few great people of this world can we assign the attribute of "sainthood", without facing reproof for the melodrama or even ecstasy of our pen (obviously we are not talking here about the codes of the Church, although everything in the universe aims at the common endpoint, generally called metaphysics). One of them was the French poet, Guillaume Apollinaire, who treated the art of love, sensual poetry as a poem of adoration, a litany to the most divine female body, ritual prayer, worthy of sacred worship, risking an impeding accusation of "trash trader", an opinion which was later refuted by critics thousands of times.
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The text appeared in Polish in the PRACOWNIA literary quarterly, in March 2003, No.31 (1/2003) - THE PHANTOM GENERATION

Even the metaphorical curse "bastard" has more weight than the word "phantom", which is a reference to the state of the poet's usual being or, rather, not-being. A bastard may at least meddle, provoke, contaminate, lie and interfere, which some poets mistake for a statement of independence. A phantom, i.e. a trace of somebody/something or a place for somebody/something, that has not started, or has already ended, or has never existed at all, is a horrible, nihilistic state: neither human, nor divine. To add insult to injury, the fact of non-existence does not eliminate pain. A lack of a foot is not equal to feeling no pain in it. On the contrary, the pain felt in an amputated part of the body is said to be far more acute than that in a wounded leg, or lacerated soul.
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The text appeared in in the literary magazine PRACOWNIA No 33-34 (3-4 / 2003) - AMERICANS IN KRAKOW

It depends on whether you get out of the bed on the wrong side, they say. It depends on what your eyes want to see, I say to myself. Are you able to look through those four windows and think aloud: "What a beautiful sight, those images of trees". These were the words of Basia W. when she visited me in Krakow for the first time. She did not look down into the abyss of run-down, grimy art-nouveau buildings whose floors were suspended in the entropy of neglect. She did not see the leafless stump of a chimney towering above the century - old trees lining the Grzegórzecka street. And now I am looking out like she did, not down where the greyness is zigzagged by black graffiti reminiscent of psychedelic gothic print. I am not gazing at nor listening to the monotony of the street below as if it were a lower deck of a ship, say deck T, like time, or W, like water. The water in the trough of the street's time flows rapidly, impetuously, washes away the noises as if they were pebbles in a river, carries them for a while and discards them later somewhere on the threshold of sound. ... r e a d    m o r e

Krystyna Lenkowska - BARBARIAN IN THE GARDEN

Zbigniew Herbert's public declaration of his love for Piero della Francesca, a Quattrocento painter, made me an irresistle desire to see their (i.e. Piero's and Zbigniew's) embodiments of beauty with my own eyes. My Italian paths! My Italian paths were sinuous and winding (as human fate strewn with temptations, as Orpheus' wanderings in Hades and Tracia), through the miracles of the cathedrals, the shades and lights by Signorelli and Duccio, and the extravagances of one of the popes. Four times, I turned my head to the call of "supernatural" phenomena ... r e a d    m o r e

Nowa Okolica Poetów, literary magazine, no 14 (2003 no 4) - "CERTAIN ENVY OF AMERICANS" - Submitted to print in "Periphery" magazine, US - An interview with Adam Zagajewski

This is something that Americans are almost completely unable to do in poetry. They yearn to find a hold on the world in such a way that the author's individuality is not lost but at the same time find an answer to what is happening in the world. ... r e a d    m o r e