The article analyses Piotr Sommer’s achievements in translation. The art of transfer is considered here as both the act of translation and revelation – joining translation of literary texts and their compilation in anthologies with scrutinizing particular writers and literary phenomena as well as the process of translation itself, and introducing a new transforming quality to native poetry. A translator-anthologist can be perceived from that perspective as a link between two literary cultures, and also as an initiator of changes and an independent creator who develops, in his own language and on his own conditions, a new canon of poetry. Even if it is a paradoxical avant-garde canon, it is all the more inspiring for innovative actions.
The notion of American shot, used as a metaphor and figure of interpretation, is consolidated by limiting the materials to translations from New York poetsi – these are the most specific for the work and included in two significant books: Artykuły pochodzenia zagranicznego (1996) and the extended version O krok od nich from (2006). This perspective enables one to present poetry transfer as the art of registration (in a new language) and projection (in a new context) of textual reflections of literary imagination. The American poets are presented here against the background of Marshall Berman’s philosophical concept of modernism and within the framework of Marjorie Perloff’s critical and literary thought. The figure of John Ashbery, as the creator of the most eccentric and self-contained and, simultaneously, influential poetry, is moving towards centre stage here. Apart from the general recognitions concerning Sommer’s translation and compilation methods, the article includes in-depth analysis of one Ashbery’s poem, especially emblematic for the discussed issues.
