The discussion on the topic of contemporary literary criticism has been contained within two symbolic poles: the article What does it mean today to be a Polish writer by Karol Maliszewski written in 1995 and What does it mean today to be a Polish authoress, written in 2008 by Igor Stokfiszewski. The former paper, which is characteristic of the critical-literary awareness of the 90s of the 20th century, promotes literature that is far from being involved and is based on an individual writer’s gesture; the latter, on the other hand, belongs to one of the better known critical projects of recent years and it promotes a political turnaround proclaiming literature that is engagé and one that is treated as an instrument of social critique.
The project of literary criticism is at the same time an expressive and controversial proposition and its significance also consists in the fact that it became a strong impulse which mobilized literary criticism to define and defend other conceptions of literature and criticism and in this way contribute to a fundamental debate in the milieu of critics.

In recent years, involvement has become almost the main topic of literary life; this is due largely to the fact that, firstly, there has emerged a group of authors who manifest not only their political views, but also their obligations; secondly due to the fact that some critics appeal for a „political turnaround” in literature and thirdly, due to the popularization of the thought of several world philosophers, with Jacques Rancier at the helm, who try to extract the political out of the aesthetic, and fourthly, as a consequence of the reactivation of old languages – Marxist one on the left side and conservative-identity one on the right.
The resistance which these tendencies have aroused in some milieus is associated with the conviction that the discovery of the political possibilities of literature and its interpretation leads (or will lead) to its literariness, utilitarization, subordination to the languages that dominate on the public scene. The author of the article shares the above fears; he is of the opinion that literature should rather be an instrument for undermining instruments, pragmatism and sociologism by means of a language that does not belong to the territory of defined discourse; whereas the most interesting aspect of its political nature consists in its ability to resist politics.

In her article the authoress outlines the issues concerning the relation between feminism, literary criticism and modern literature. She poses some questions concerning the prose oeuvre of contemporary Polish women authors as well as the social contexts and aesthetic strategies associated with it. What proved to be important here were also issues allowing reflection on the change of literary-critical and historical and literary discourses inspired by feminist thought, as well as issues allowing to record the losses and gains resulting from the entanglement of feminist literary criticism in mass communication and the results of the „cultural turnaround” of feminist literary studies.

Not so long ago, the word ‘critic’ sounded proudly in Poland. Today, many people who due to their occupation have the right to use this term, try to use completely different expressions. Alternative expressions are not only effective terms whose function is to distinguish the author from a multitude of other authors, but they reflect the changing way of writing about the theatre. In my article I analyze four expressions, each of which is associated with another aspect of theatre criticism, as diversity and farreaching specialization in writing techniques and views of the persons writing about the theatre, is the answer to the changing needs of both the readers and the publishers. The term „theatre reporter” tends to focus on issues associated with the deepening rift between criticism as it is practiced by daily papers and by specialist press; the term „theatre columnist” is associated with the issue of politicizing views concerning art; the term „theatre essayist” is associated with the issue of the autonomy of criticism understood as a literary genre; whereas the term „theatre author” deals with the phenomenon of people writing about the theatre who at the same time are associated professionally with the stage and who are involved in theatre practice in various ways.

The article constitutes a polemic with two critical books containing a proposition of a different, extra-institutional conception of literary narration. Joanna Mueller’s publication entitled Stratygrafie constitutes an attempt to create a comprehensive mythology of the world, one whose genome would be made up of poetry. According to the principle which unifies various experiences, a poetic work would contain senses which an active reading – understood here rather in the categories of a fertile „aberration” than in the sense of traditional reading with understanding – should only make present. In turn, in Anna Kałuża’s Bumerang (Boomerang), the phenomenon of poetic art is treated in anti-creative categories and is rather bound up with communication, as well as with socio-political contexts. Kałuża reiterates after Wolfgang Welsh that we are currently living in an era of post-demystification and whenever reality, which is created for us by pop culture, assumes in its entirety the shape of an aesthetic construct, there is no possibility of transgressing the boundary-line between art and life.

The article constitutes and attempt to outline such a conception of art criticism which would take into consideration post-modern transformations concerning the functioning of the arts in various societies. The category of criticism is understood by me in a broad sense which enables one to accept utopian thinking and an evaluating attitude. In my research I deal with the issue of defining what is art/poetry in the context of modernday knowledge about the interpretative character of critical activities; I put forward a hypothesis that at the present moment, arguments and contentions between researchers, critics and commentators concern the very possibility of interpretation. I also opt out for perceiving positive consequences of critical work.

The authoress of the article observes a crisis of the ability of close reading in the American university practice as well as in art criticism; the crisis is caused – she tries to convince us – by the too quick and rapid cultural change in humanistic studies. Above all, she suggests a return to the practice of close reading, however not on the principle of new criticism, but with a modifying difference (here there emerges the category of reading closely). In the successive parts of her paper, Marjorie Perloff ponders on the possible modes of reading „the highly nondescript contemporary poetry” and suggests that it should be subjected to „purposefully indefinite and loose manner of reading” (at this point there emerges the concept of reading differentially). It turns out that the art of interpretation – reflection on the modes of reading contemporary poetry is accompanied by an analysis of a number of concrete poems (among others by William Carlos Williams, Tom Raworth, Susan Howe) – is above all a study of the „structure of changes” of the contemporary poem, a study oriented at a skillful way of posing questions regarding poems, rather than furnishing answers and coming up with ready-made interpretations.

How to Read Contemporary Poetry in a Contemporary Way
The article constitutes an attempt to pose a question regarding the modes of reading contemporary poetry; at the same time, it ought to be noted that the term contemporary literature is understood broadly and it denotes primarily changes in the modernist and late-modernist literature. It is, on the one hand, the critical writings of Majorie Perloff – described here against the background of the adventures of the American criticism of the 20th and 21st century, and on the other, a reading of Marcin Świetlicki’s single poem Tak, kawiarniany dekadentyzm – that proved to be convenient fields to pose the above question. The thesis concerning the exhaustion of the intentional critical style and mode of symbolist exegesis is accompanied by an attempt to reconstruct the principles which would make it possible in contemporary times to read closely a work of poetry.

FRAGMENT

Antologia polskiego dwudziestowiecznego pamfletu krytycznoliterackiego przygotowana przez Dorotę Kozicką wydaje się jednym z bardziej znaczących symptomów pewnej współczesnej zmiany w rozumieniu krytyki literackiej w Polsce. Jeszcze do niedawna istniała ona jako dosyć tradycyjna dziedzina na styku literatury i literaturoznawstwa o statusie podejrzanym, gdyż jawnie sprzecznym – co chyba nie było zbyt chętnie roztrząsane – z pewnymi dokonanymi rozstrzygnięciami teoretycznymi oraz filozoficznymi. Poststrukturalistyczna perspektywa widzenia krytyki właściwie negowała możliwość jej prawomocnego uprawiania. Na pierwszej stronie Przyjemności tekstu pisał Roland Barthes: „odwrócę wzrok, to będzie moja jedyna negacja”. Słyszeliśmy przeto, że we Francji czy krajach anglosaskich naszemu terminowi „krytyka literacka” nic nie odpowiada, gdyż tam określenie to obejmuje różne teksty interpretujące literaturę, w tym także filologiczne dysertacje naukowe. U nas jednak nadal krytyka nie polegała na Barthesowskim odwracaniu wzroku, negacja wpisywana w gesty krytyczne była ujawniana, wypowiadana, zaczepna, kojarzyła się z takimi eksperckimi „wybrykami”, jak wartościowanie i hierarchizowanie. Uprawianie krytyki literackiej stawiało wręcz na pozycji staroświeckiego amatora literatury.

FRAGMENT
Nowe książki, które właśnie się ukazały, pozwalają na doczytanie Błońskiego. Wydawało się, że znamy go już wystarczająco dobrze, że wszystko przeczytaliśmy. Tymczasem wydobywane są na światło dzienne teksty wcześniej niepublikowane, niekiedy bardzo osobiste, intymne. Przypominamy sobie też (lub czytamy pierwszy raz) rzeczy drukowane, ale zagubione w czasopismach lub programach teatralnych. To okazja, żeby na twórczość Jana Błońskiego spojrzeć z innej strony i na nowo ją przemyśleć. Dopełniamy wiedzę o jego pisarstwie, ale także – co nie mniej ważne – o jego osobie..

FRAGMENT
Problemy oscylujące wokół kwestii polityczności literatury stały się w pewnym momencie, a myślę tu szczególnie o przełomie lat 2009/2010, obowiązkowym zestawem zagadnień podejmowanych przez krytyków i literaturoznawców w Polsce. Jak łatwo przewidzieć – dyskusja się nie zakończyła (raczej trudno sobie wyobrazić, co mogłoby ją zwieńczyć), zyskuje inne odcienie, pojawiają się kolejne publikacje, a rewolucyjnie usposobieni dyskutanci nie odpuszczają. W dotąd nieustających rozważaniach przoduje „Krytyka Polityczna”, która w ciągu kilku lat okazała się ważnym uczestnikiem gry – także tej krytycznoliterackiej. Wydawane przez nią książki w rozmaitych seriach mają być – z jednej strony – głosami w aktualnych (a jak woleliby powiedzieć pewnie członkowie Zespołu KP: inicjowanych przez nich) dyskusjach, z drugiej zaś – dostarczać intelektualnych pożywek, którymi karmią się wielokrotnie także stroniący od tej formacji. W roku 2009 Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej zaproponowało dwie – istotne dla omawianego tematu – pozycje: tzw. przewodnik Polityka literatury i książkę Igora Stokfiszewskiego Zwrot polityczny, w którym zebrane są – wcześniej już publikowane – artykuły tego krytyka

MY MARVELLINGS
Moje zdziwienia/My Marvellings/ is a column run by Henryk Markiewicz, retired Professor of the Jagiellonian University and one of the most outstanding Polish literary historians and theoreticians. In his essays, Professor Markiewicz presents and discusses various literary theory publications, comments on current events at the academia, argues with and questions authors of scholarly and popular articles, all the time being indefatigable in his insistence on respecting standards of academic professionalism, competence, honesty and responsibility for judgments and opinions expressed

MY MARVELLINGS
Moje zdziwienia/My Marvellings/ is a column run by Henryk Markiewicz, retired Professor of the Jagiellonian University and one of the most outstanding Polish literary historians and theoreticians. In his essays, Professor Markiewicz presents and discusses various literary theory publications, comments on current events at the academia, argues with and questions authors of scholarly and popular articles, all the time being indefatigable in his insistence on respecting standards of academic professionalism, competence, honesty and responsibility for judgments and opinions expressed

MY MARVELLINGS
Moje zdziwienia/My Marvellings/ is a column run by Henryk Markiewicz, retired Professor of the Jagiellonian University and one of the most outstanding Polish literary historians and theoreticians. In his essays, Professor Markiewicz presents and discusses various literary theory publications, comments on current events at the academia, argues with and questions authors of scholarly and popular articles, all the time being indefatigable in his insistence on respecting standards of academic professionalism, competence, honesty and responsibility for judgments and opinions expressed