Dear Ms. Schubert

The first complete English translation of Ewa Lipska’s exciting “Dear Ms. Schubert” poems

Ewa Lipska is one of Europe’s most compelling and important poets, but relatively little of her recent work has been translated into English. A Polish-English bilingual edition, Dear Ms. Schubert is the first complete collection of her remarkable poetic postcards addressed to “Ms. Schubert,” a mysterious contemporary European everywoman.

Written by a certain Mr. Schmetterling (“Mr. Butterfly”), these brief, intimate poems are by turns philosophical, political, and playfully erotic. Combining subversive wit and surrealist imagery, they slowly reveal the contours of a shared secret life played out against a turbulent historical backdrop—a relationship that strikes a precarious balance between deep cultural skepticism and authentic love.

Featuring the original Polish text and the English translation on facing pages, Dear Ms. Schubert is a highly original and appealing book from a poet who richly deserves a wide English-language readership.

"Readers lucky enough to find themselves immersed in the poems [in Dear Ms. Schubert] will discover a lovely garden of delights…The poems, in a confident translation by Robin Davidson and Ewa Elżbieta Nowakowska, are pleasant to read…clever and startling. —Kyle Torke, Colorado Review"

"Dear Ms. Schubert is an admirable addition to international literature, a gift to the English-speaking world."---L. Ali Khan, NY Journal of Books

"Written by a Mr. Butterfly, these brief, playful poems show the intimacies of love while maintaining deep cultural skepticism."

“This poetry jumps and leaps and runs.”—from the foreword by Adam Zagajewski

“Ewa Lipska is a poet of the first importance. Her signature style—terse, witty, with images that turn on a dime—is unmistakable. The translations in Dear Ms. Schubert succeed in conveying her controlled, understated tone, her playfulness, and her ability to astonish with a single unexpected image or word.”—Bill Johnston, Indiana University Bloomington

“Ewa Lipska doesn’t just use words in these terse and ironic poems—she also listens to how politicians, marketing executives, and so-called ordinary folk use them to express their fears and desires. This makes her both uncompromising and generous. Born ‘in a downpour of uncertainty,’ these magnificently translated poems engage with the present moment without losing sight of the timelessness of human kindness and love.”—Piotr Florczyk, author of East & West and From the Annals of Kraków