How should students interpret the poem?
Well, I can imagine that if I were to show this to students, that their first response would be “why I am reading bad poetry?” But I’d have to ask them to imagine who would be writing this and what kind of a person that would be. Semi-educated miner in the south of Poland who is there at an important juncture in Polish history and in East European history is also someone we need to try to understand. We need to try to imagine what kind of a person he might be and look at the imagery and think about what things are important to him and understand him in that way. When I use that poetry, it’s in direct contrast to the poetry from Gdansk. I also give them one song that I have translated from the Gdansk strike, a song that’s rather more confrontational but also quite funny. And so they do see the contrast between the two. That here they’re having a great time in Gdansk and here it’s really gloomy in the very optimistic story of 1989, you know, as it should be, and this is one of the few mo
