Decay as The Long Goodbye: On the Polish Poet Marcin Baran
by Wiktoria Klera
The poetry collection I will be discussing here was published in 2024, in Poland, and written by Marcin Baran, poet, translator, literary critic, journalist, and editor. He was born in Krakow on November 16, 1963, and made his literary debut in the mid-1980s, publishing poems in the first issue of the cult magazine bruLion (meaning “notebook”, “draft” or “rough sketch”). In Poland, a whole generation of poets is still referred to as the bruLion generation. Baran was also co-editor of bruLion, associated with the magazine until 1990.
In the 1990s, he was very active in literary life, but the intervals between his book publications grew longer and, over time, his voice became less audible. The Polish literary world fractured into several distinct spheres: celebrity culture, represented in the official media (such as the state television channel TVP Kultura); a vibrant circle on social media; and small niche groups, usually linked to publishing houses and literary festivals who generally supported one another. After the breakup of “bruLion,” literary criticism largely bypassed Marcin Baran's poetry.
Baran published eight books of poetry, and, with Marcin Sendecki and Marcin Swietlicki, co-edited the anthology „Długie pożegnanie. Tribute to Raymond Chandler” [The Long Goodbye. Tribute to Raymond Chandler] (1997) and „Żegnaj, laleczko. Wiersze noir” [Fareway, my Lovely. Noir Poems] (2010). He edited the anthology „Carnivorous Boy Carnivorous Bird. Poetry from Poland” (Zephyr Press, Chicago 2002). In 2019, Marcin Baran and Marcin Sendecki published a joint poem entitled „Koniec wakacji” [End of Vacation].
Despite this legacy, Baran's latest book of poetry, „Darń” [Turf]*, was one of the most underrated poetry collections of 2024. In today's world of simple, effective messages that address current global issues, Baran's poetry neither tackles such large themes nor engages in narrow self-promotion. His poetry is sometimes dismissed as “too difficult,” “backward,” “too traditional.” True that many of these poems are so eloquent that it is sometimes difficult to keep up with him, but isn't that part of what gives us satisfaction when reading poetry? When understanding does not come easily, but we keep up discovering more clues and intertextual references?
If we recall Marcin Baran's earlier books, we will certainly recognize a continuation of his previous poetics in „Darń” [Turf]. The emphasis is slightly different here: there are fewer playful linguistic games, fewer film references, and fewer noir motifs. The theme of death is omnipresent, strangely intertwined with the theme of physical pleasures. He describes decay in many aspects, not only the decay of the body caused by passage of time. All these sewers lead to the ultimate end of everything. Yet despite this pervasive imagery of decline, Baran's poetic world is not a sad one, not dominated by depression or pessimism. Where there is darkness, often it resembles black humor.
I would like to focus here on one text, a few short lines that capture the spirit of Marcin Baran's poetry and the idiom he consistently employs. (Till now, neither of the following texts have been translated into English.)
The first poem of this volume invites multiple interpretations. “Opisanie się” [“Describing Myself”], presents a self-portrait in crisis: mental breakdown, feelings of ugliness, and loss of control.
Describing Myself
I pass away, grow old, I fall apart.
Decay in many forms.
Everything slips, flies out of my hands.
What once could be grasped is no more.
The sand cracks from my ugly self.
The bile of the exposed man.
The title itself is intriguing, as we rarely describe ourselves in the process of disintegration. This task seems doubly difficult, because the subject distances himself in order to perceive himself in fragments. It resembles an obituary written during the writer’s lifetime – or more precisely, an auto-obituary.
“The sand cracks from my ugly self.”
It “cracks.” Why does it not scatter, as one would expect? Why does the poet's own self, which he considers ugly, exert such a strong negative force on the world that even sand succumbs to it? Sand may symbolize the desert, and, for some, the desert implies emptiness: a space devoid of life, human presence. It may also imply the absence of emotions and thus an acknowledgement that his internal struggles are responsible for this state of desertification. While the poem itself may not explicitly convey this, the use of vivid metaphors associated with sand and the desert serves to underscore Marcin Baran's proficiency as a landscape poet. This distinctive feature of his oeuvre distinguishes him from his contemporaries and contrasts with the prevailing trends in contemporary Polish poetry.
Here the speaker emerges as bitter, ugly, without hope, consumed by the experience of transience and self-destruction. This has long preoccupied Baran, and this poem functions almost as a mini-manifesto: the human being decomposes both externally and internally. In Baran's poetry, physical decay occupies an important place, yet interestingly, in his poetic world, time itself also undergoes decay. This is therefore more than the ordinary passage of time faced by every individual.
By contrast, in other poems these images of decay are often juxtaposed against desires for bodily pleasures – even as trivial as the craving for sweets. A particularly salient example of this is the poem „Według ciała” [After the Flesh], which bears a striking resemblance to biblical imagery.
After the Flesh
In the bakery window – plump pastries, pyramidal cakes
and limp rolls with cream.
In front of the display window, for more than half a century now, a six-year-old-boy
with his face smeared in whipped cream.
A monstrous belly tears at his sailor-collared blouse,
brown streaks of marmalade staining the blue cloth that groans at the seams.
A greasy, flabby creature in knee-length shorts
hammers the glass with fists like hams.
Neither squealing, nor sobbing, nor choking on tears, howling:
Cookie! I want a cookie! Give me a cookie!
(This is not hunger,
but gluttony.)
That gobble-guts and fibber-guts already has all he needs
to die and in truth is good for nothing else.
From the corners of his mouth spill the stomach’s contents,
and again and again comes the hiss of gases seeping out from his sagging buttocks.
Yet the eternal boy keeps dreaming,
stubby sausage-fingers kneading and squeezing one sweet after another.
To lick them with his slippery tongue, to cram them all down into the stomach,
stuffed tight, clogged full up the gullet – to the throat.
The sweet and the rotten. Baron has a volume of poetry entitled „Gnijąca wisienka” [The Rotten Cherry].
The end of everything lurks—from the beginning of each day. Yet persistence possesses a constructive force; it consistently resists decline.
Darń [Turf], Marcin Baran, published by Wydawnictwo Wojewódzkiej Biblioteki Publicznej i Centrum Animacji Kultury w Poznaniu, Poznań 2024, Poland, –88 pages.
Note: The double commas are the Polish punctuation mark for the left-side quote around titles. I decided to leave them as is. Something different. - S. L
In the 1990s, he was very active in literary life, but the intervals between his book publications grew longer and, over time, his voice became less audible. The Polish literary world fractured into several distinct spheres: celebrity culture, represented in the official media (such as the state television channel TVP Kultura); a vibrant circle on social media; and small niche groups, usually linked to publishing houses and literary festivals who generally supported one another. After the breakup of “bruLion,” literary criticism largely bypassed Marcin Baran's poetry.
Baran published eight books of poetry, and, with Marcin Sendecki and Marcin Swietlicki, co-edited the anthology „Długie pożegnanie. Tribute to Raymond Chandler” [The Long Goodbye. Tribute to Raymond Chandler] (1997) and „Żegnaj, laleczko. Wiersze noir” [Fareway, my Lovely. Noir Poems] (2010). He edited the anthology „Carnivorous Boy Carnivorous Bird. Poetry from Poland” (Zephyr Press, Chicago 2002). In 2019, Marcin Baran and Marcin Sendecki published a joint poem entitled „Koniec wakacji” [End of Vacation].
Despite this legacy, Baran's latest book of poetry, „Darń” [Turf]*, was one of the most underrated poetry collections of 2024. In today's world of simple, effective messages that address current global issues, Baran's poetry neither tackles such large themes nor engages in narrow self-promotion. His poetry is sometimes dismissed as “too difficult,” “backward,” “too traditional.” True that many of these poems are so eloquent that it is sometimes difficult to keep up with him, but isn't that part of what gives us satisfaction when reading poetry? When understanding does not come easily, but we keep up discovering more clues and intertextual references?
If we recall Marcin Baran's earlier books, we will certainly recognize a continuation of his previous poetics in „Darń” [Turf]. The emphasis is slightly different here: there are fewer playful linguistic games, fewer film references, and fewer noir motifs. The theme of death is omnipresent, strangely intertwined with the theme of physical pleasures. He describes decay in many aspects, not only the decay of the body caused by passage of time. All these sewers lead to the ultimate end of everything. Yet despite this pervasive imagery of decline, Baran's poetic world is not a sad one, not dominated by depression or pessimism. Where there is darkness, often it resembles black humor.
I would like to focus here on one text, a few short lines that capture the spirit of Marcin Baran's poetry and the idiom he consistently employs. (Till now, neither of the following texts have been translated into English.)
The first poem of this volume invites multiple interpretations. “Opisanie się” [“Describing Myself”], presents a self-portrait in crisis: mental breakdown, feelings of ugliness, and loss of control.
Describing Myself
I pass away, grow old, I fall apart.
Decay in many forms.
Everything slips, flies out of my hands.
What once could be grasped is no more.
The sand cracks from my ugly self.
The bile of the exposed man.
The title itself is intriguing, as we rarely describe ourselves in the process of disintegration. This task seems doubly difficult, because the subject distances himself in order to perceive himself in fragments. It resembles an obituary written during the writer’s lifetime – or more precisely, an auto-obituary.
“The sand cracks from my ugly self.”
It “cracks.” Why does it not scatter, as one would expect? Why does the poet's own self, which he considers ugly, exert such a strong negative force on the world that even sand succumbs to it? Sand may symbolize the desert, and, for some, the desert implies emptiness: a space devoid of life, human presence. It may also imply the absence of emotions and thus an acknowledgement that his internal struggles are responsible for this state of desertification. While the poem itself may not explicitly convey this, the use of vivid metaphors associated with sand and the desert serves to underscore Marcin Baran's proficiency as a landscape poet. This distinctive feature of his oeuvre distinguishes him from his contemporaries and contrasts with the prevailing trends in contemporary Polish poetry.
Here the speaker emerges as bitter, ugly, without hope, consumed by the experience of transience and self-destruction. This has long preoccupied Baran, and this poem functions almost as a mini-manifesto: the human being decomposes both externally and internally. In Baran's poetry, physical decay occupies an important place, yet interestingly, in his poetic world, time itself also undergoes decay. This is therefore more than the ordinary passage of time faced by every individual.
By contrast, in other poems these images of decay are often juxtaposed against desires for bodily pleasures – even as trivial as the craving for sweets. A particularly salient example of this is the poem „Według ciała” [After the Flesh], which bears a striking resemblance to biblical imagery.
After the Flesh
In the bakery window – plump pastries, pyramidal cakes
and limp rolls with cream.
In front of the display window, for more than half a century now, a six-year-old-boy
with his face smeared in whipped cream.
A monstrous belly tears at his sailor-collared blouse,
brown streaks of marmalade staining the blue cloth that groans at the seams.
A greasy, flabby creature in knee-length shorts
hammers the glass with fists like hams.
Neither squealing, nor sobbing, nor choking on tears, howling:
Cookie! I want a cookie! Give me a cookie!
(This is not hunger,
but gluttony.)
That gobble-guts and fibber-guts already has all he needs
to die and in truth is good for nothing else.
From the corners of his mouth spill the stomach’s contents,
and again and again comes the hiss of gases seeping out from his sagging buttocks.
Yet the eternal boy keeps dreaming,
stubby sausage-fingers kneading and squeezing one sweet after another.
To lick them with his slippery tongue, to cram them all down into the stomach,
stuffed tight, clogged full up the gullet – to the throat.
The sweet and the rotten. Baron has a volume of poetry entitled „Gnijąca wisienka” [The Rotten Cherry].
The end of everything lurks—from the beginning of each day. Yet persistence possesses a constructive force; it consistently resists decline.
Darń [Turf], Marcin Baran, published by Wydawnictwo Wojewódzkiej Biblioteki Publicznej i Centrum Animacji Kultury w Poznaniu, Poznań 2024, Poland, –88 pages.
Note: The double commas are the Polish punctuation mark for the left-side quote around titles. I decided to leave them as is. Something different. - S. L
Wiktoria Klera holds a PhD in literature. Her research centers on contemporary Polish poetry after 1989, with particular attention to the bruLion generation, totart, and noir poetry. She investigates the interpretation of song lyrics and the shifting boundaries between poetic and musical forms. Professionally affiliated with the National Museum in Szczecin, she has extensive experience in editing scholarly and museum publications. She is the author of a monograph on the poetry of Marcin Świetlicki and a volume of her own poems. Her scholarly interests are complemented by a lifelong passion for music and visual art.
