"Zagajewski can seem anachronistically highbrow: “Poets who listen to pop music — their numbers are growing — don’t seem to have … mystical leanings.” Once I unroll my eyes, I can see that Zagajewski is much attracted by “the ineffable,” by which he means, I think, what can’t be perceived entirely by the senses. He pokes fun at himself about this, or allows his father to. A journalist asks about an essay in which Zagajewski claimed settled people prefer painting while displaced people prefer music, “the most metaphorical of the arts” — metaphor being that which moves the literal toward the ineffable. “Slight exaggeration,” says Zagajewski’s father, an engineer — unwittingly giving name to this book. Zagajewski retorts: “A good definition of poetry … a slight exaggeration, until we make ourselves at home in it. Then it becomes the truth. But when we leave it again — since permanent residence is impossible — it becomes once more a slight exaggeration.”" Daisy Fried NYT

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