A Daily Glance
Piotr Gwiazda's Gagarin Street explores what happens when the places you grow up change. It's a book that examines the desire to escape your memories while regretting that the places of your memories change even their names. The title poem expresses this theme:
When I was a child I lived on Gagarin Street.
Today it's called Pilsudski Street.
This experience is familiar for people coming out of the old communist countries. I've heard similar stories from other Poles and some Latvians, and Gwiazda examines the ideas of loss and escape from one's past well. In reading, I felt like I got a glimpse of a person whose personal stories I want to know more about.
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