The Butterfly's Choice - Poetry by Joanna Kurowska

Publication Date: March 15, 2015
Paperback, 72 pages
ISBN: 978-1-937968-15-1

Available from Small Press Distribution

Like the titular butterfly trapped in a headlamp, the poetry in this collection occupies the boundaries and extremities of our human condition, probing and challenging what it means to live "half-eaten" but still grasping at the possibility of hope and meaning, "yielding half-beauty to the world." Informed on the one hand by the poet's immigrant experience of shifting between homelands and languages, and underpinned by her exploration of gnosticism, these are works of clear-eyed observation and studied contemplation, fulfilling in the end her own description of poetry:

a camera
has made a picture
it shows
the exterior and the interior sides
of things

Praise for Joanna Kurowska's The Butterfly's Choice:

"The Butterfly's Choice invites the reader to contemplate the possibility of wisdom, to wander to its doorstep. It teaches us and warns us all at once. And it invites us to join in a universal humility — to be spiritually silent. An admirable quest."

—Helen Degen Cohen, author of Habry and Co-Editor of Rhino Magazine

"In The Butterfly’s Choice, the poetry of Joanna Kurowska alights on diverse peoples and places like a 'monarch wing on my path,' ready, by the poet's choice, to be noticed and seen with fresh light and shadow."

—Mary Harwell Sayler, poetry editor & poet-author of Outside Eden and Living in the Nature Poem

"Why am I the air for the world’s lungs? Joanna Kurowska searches and yearns for an answer. With imagery so beautiful and poems so moving, her poetry emerges and takes flight, like a butterfly, with a spirit and intellect that touches the soul like no other. The best book of poetry I've read in a long time."

—Gloria Mindock, editor of Červená Barva Press

"This is a quietly powerful book of poetry... a book that wants something strong and emotional back from you, but doesn't necessarily demand it—instead it presents a way forward, for both poet and reader, to come to an understanding before parting ways."

—Darryl Price, Olentangy Review (click here to read the full review)

"The Butterfly’s Choice is a thrilling voyage across shifting sands of time. In this third book of her poetry, you become aware of the power of an international language harnessed creatively by a bilingual user and its dexterous employment in the hands of an accomplished writer. Here, the reader keeps on moving in different realms and contexts, guided by a medley of strange metaphors, images; twists and turns of a language mastered....In brief, The Butterfly’s Choice is a delicate tapestry of emotions, moods and contexts caught in broad and/or minimalist verbal strokes, thus creating a deeply enriching and satisfying totality."

—Sunil Sharma, Fox Chase Review (click here to read the full review)

"The Butterfly’s Choice creates images that stir the imagination to question the world around us. While I find poetry sometimes hard to connect with as it reads and speaks differently to each reader, these fifty-poems are packed with intensity. There is a physical lure to her poetry as it sits on the blank page, a cryptic, philosophical, and striking breath of fresh air that is swept in by her musings on life, death, and growth."

—Natasha Persaud, Vine Leaves Literary Journal (click here to read the full review)

Joanna Kurowska immigrated to the US in 1988. After publishing two books of poetry in her native Poland, Ściana (The Wall) and Obok (Near), she wrote Inclusions (Červená Barva Press, 2014), a volume of originally English-language poems. Her own translations of her Polish poems appeared in the collection The Wall & Beyond (eLectio Publishing, 2013). Joanna’s poetry and fiction have appeared widely in American and European journals, including American Tanka, Apple Valley Review, Atticus, Bateau, Christianity & Literature, Dappled Things, Illuminations, International Poetry Review, Kultura (Paris), Oklahoma Review, Penwood Review, Poetry Nook, Postcard Shorts, Room Magazine, Solo Novo, Tipton Poetry Journal, Vine Leaves Literary Journal, Vineyards: Journal of Christian Poetry, and Write From Wrong among others.

Her critical works have appeared in The Conradian (UK),Joseph Conrad Today, Sarmatian Review, Slavic and East European Journal, Southern Quarterly, Yearbook of Conrad Studies (Poland), and other publications.

Joanna currently lives in Evanston, Illinois, together with her husband John Brownell, son Paweł Młynarczyk, and cat Rufus. She continues to write in her second language, English.