Gravitation

Selected Poems

by Milan Děžinský; translated by Nathan Fields

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Pub Date Mar 03 2026 | Archive Date Mar 03 2026

University of Pittsburgh Press

Poetry & Verse

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Description

The selected poetry of Milan Děžinský, translated by Nathan Fields, including many poems previously not published in English by the celebrated Czech poet.

Gravitation is a collection of poems that take the ordinary details of everyday living—things like breakfast cereal, household chores, or the scenery outside a window—and reveals the strange, hidden depths behind them. The poems are quiet and precise, often starting in a familiar place but then shifting toward the uncanny or unsettling, as if there’s always another layer of meaning beneath the surface. The tone is thoughtful, sometimes tinged with melancholy or unease, but never heavy-handed; instead, Děžinský writes with restraint and sharp observation, letting small images carry big emotional or philosophical weight. His voice balances intimacy and detachment, giving readers space to reflect on the secret, often overlooked lives of objects, places, and inner emotions.

The selected poetry of Milan Děžinský, translated by Nathan Fields, including many poems previously not published in English by the celebrated Czech poet.

Gravitation is a collection of poems that...

A Note From the Publisher

Milan Děžinský is a Czech poet and the author of eight collections of poetry. In 2018, he won the Magnesia Litera Award for poetry, the most prestigious annual literary prize in the Czech Republic. His work has been translated into English, German, and Polish. Several of his poems have appeared in US and UK magazines, including The New York Review of Books (July 2025 issue), Poetry London, Modern Poetry in Translation, The Dark Horse, and PN Review, as well as the Prague-based B O D Y. Děžinský’s poetry builds on the Deep Image tradition and shows the influence of poets such as James Wright, Tomas Tranströmer, and Sylvia Plath. He lives in Roudnice nad Labem in the Czech Republic.

Advance Praise

"Milan Děžinský’s poems probe what lives in the shadows. They’re alert to the echoes and whispers of history, to what’s heard through walls, and to secrets forests keep. They speculate about the wonder of a woman’s tongue, peer into the composition of matter, question who is prey and who is predator. And perhaps most importantly, these poems are attentive to every kind of messenger: injured animals, apparitions, ‘the mathematical beauty of frost,’ a wall containing a still-trembling ‘tear of builder’s sweat.’ Deep and dark as chasms, sometimes wry, sometimes chilling, they demand repeated readings. Dear translator, can we please have some more?"

-Amy Gerstler, author of Is This My Final Form?

"Milan Děžinský’s poems embrace immediacy. They arrive on the page as if from a vast silence. Aware of the cost of history, claiming no place in the world, Děžinský inhabits contingency: ‘I gaze into the sun and I’m already someone else.’ Then a poem will slip, who-me, into the infinite, without a trace of rhetoric, with no comment on the distance traveled: ‘We look into the fire / as if again witnessing / the creation of the world.’ Searching for a language freed of hierarchies, intimacy without a template, Děžinský’s vision is radically open. You might think of James Baldwin’s insight that ‘The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions hidden by the answers.’ In an age that bows to absolutes, Gravitation is beautifully autonomous, intuitive, human."

-D. Nurkse, author of A Country of Strangers: New and Selected Poems