It is useful, when analysing the processes related to transferring poetry from one culture to another, to take into account extratextual factors such as the identities, reputations, and personal agendas of the people involved. The Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert is a case in point, as he seems to have been successfully cast as a socially engaged poet by editor Al Alvarez and translators Czesław Miłosz and Peter Dale Scott, who introduced his poems to English-speaking audiences in 1968. So successfully,
in fact, that from the seventies to this day some anglophone readers and critics have found it difficult to value his work for reasons other than their connection with current affairs. The tendency to read Herbert’s poetry as strictly political has endured despite the passing of time and the dramatic changes on the political map of Europe. 

It is useful, when analysing the processes related to transferring poetry from one culture to another, to take into account extratextual factors such as the identities, reputations, and personal agendas of the people involved. The Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert is a case in point, as he seems to have been successfully cast as a socially engaged poet by editor Al Alvarez and translators Czesław Miłosz and Peter Dale Scott, who introduced his poems to English-speaking audiences in 1968. So successfully,
in fact, that from the seventies to this day some anglophone readers and critics have found it difficult to value his work for reasons other than their connection with current affairs. The tendency to read Herbert’s poetry as strictly political has endured despite the passing of time and the dramatic changes on the political map of Europe.