SOURCE: A review of Conversation with the Prince and Other Poems, in World Literature Today, Vol. 54, No. 4, Autumn, 1993, p. 662.

In the following review, Carpenter points out some of the strengths and weaknesses in Różewicz's poetry from Conversation with the Prince and Other Poems.

It is welcome to have Adam Czerniawski's translations of Różewicz's poetry in print again. This latest collection [Conversation with the Prince and Other Poems] is an expanded version of the Selected Poems (Penguin, 1976), with a generous selection of Różewicz's recent poems. The translations are smooth, colloquial, both resourceful and very flexible, and also show a thorough familiarity with all aspects of the originals. The introduction raises a variety of issues. Perhaps one should not expect too much from a presentation that is necessarily constricted. Still, there are some assertions that seem to raise more questions than they answer.

First, the “moral preoccupation...