The article offers a re-reading of an influential series of critical essays and commentaries published by Igor Stokfiszewski and various authors in 2007, as part of a debate on the role and importance of zaangażowanie (roughly “political commitment”) in contemporary poetry and criticism in Poland. In reconstructing the underlying logic of the debate, it aims to emphasise certain details and complexities that were so far largely ignored by critics, in order to point out indirect and often unexpected methodological, philosophical and political implications of some of the views put forward in the course of the exchange.

The article is to present a preliminary analysis of chosen archival materials by Tymoteusz Karpowicz and Krystyna Miłobędzka –the representatives of Polish postwar Avant-garde. The study is a part of the multiperspective research on these two partly related poetic projects, which seem to be similar in seeking for experiments and new forms of expression, although they are based on different concepts and stylistics. Further research on the creative processes, exposing the material, dynamic and intentionally open-ended nature of their texts can shed a new light on the history of Polish postwar Avant-garde. The archives of Karpowicz and Miłobędzka remain the ‘works in progress’, which is significant in the context of their creative programs and poetic practices.

The main purpose of this article is to conceptualise “the solitude” as one of the most relevant terms used in Ewa Lipska’s works. Brejnak claims that the experience of many Lipska’s literary characters/lyric egos is based on longing for existential freedom and self-sufficiency (which Friedrich Nietzsche described as “the Self” in his Thus Spoke Zarathustra). This pursuit that is unrealistic/unfeasible by definition consists of the dialectics of creation and destruction, transgression and introspection as well as an ambiguous desire to both exceed yourself and own the awareness of yourself (which was the main problem faced by Octavio Paz in his essay The Dialectic of Solitude). Brejnak attempts to prove the dialectic structure of Lipskas “solitude” on the basis of the analysis of selected works from the poetry collection Death Is Not at Stake, But the White Cord (1981). The main conclusion of the article is the ascertainment that “solitary” subjectivity, which Lipska problematizes in many works, can be called homo dialecticus. This notion used by Michel Foucault should be understood as a human being whose existence is insolvably problematic, suspended in the ontological and epistemological void – “in emergency mode”.

Little attention has been devoted so far to the relation between the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop and works by Andrzej Sosnowski, which include translations of Bishop’s poems, despite many similarities the two poets share: a peculiar position within the literary tradition, a specific sensibility, an interest in sophisticated forms, or various affinities in terms of subject matter, especially nautical topics. More resemblances can be also identified at a deeper level, where they manifest in subtle ways: both poets are inclined to reflect on loss and the limits of poetic expression, ultimately scrutinizing (albeit indirectly) the relationship between death and literature. Exploring the connection between the two writers also makes it possible to highlight the role played by translation in poetry. As shown, the boundary between original works and translations can be blurred, offering a new model for reading and interpreting poetry – one based not on hierarchies but a community of thought.

The article presents the work of Piotr Janicki, one of the most interesting Polish poets of the middle generation (born 1974). The author focuses primarily on the 2018 untitled volume of poems, referred to as [A Dog’s Book], in order to recreate the structure of the subject it contains, using the categories offered by the ecocritical discourse, represented by the works of Anna Ubertowska, Rosi Braidotti, Timothy Morton and other. In the course of the analysis, it turns out that an important assumption of Janicki’s poetry is the desire to break the anthropocentric perspective, which would place his work in the trend of “deeply ecological” literature, the task of which is, inter alia, to “infect” readers with new forms of sensitivity and imagination, breaking with the traditionally understood humanism, which places man above non-human beings, and not in a network of relationships with them, as it happens in [The Dog’s Book].

This article sheds new light on Konrad Góra’s Nie (2016) in a sound studies’ perspective. It opposes putting the poetic volume as minorities’ voice of representation under the poetry of political involvement. Instead of allowing this, it proposes an interpretation of this book through the voice par excellence, which does not subordinate to speech and exists in his bodily, phonic shape. The point of departure is, firstly; a recognition that Nie subsists in intermedia realizations, which emphasize the significance of phonetic voice comprehension, secondly; an underline that starting this poetic volume by JiříKolář’s tale, make possible to perceive this one in the oral context. The proposal for interpretation exposes the new understanding of the notion of involvement in poetry. It means that the involvement is not the representation of the Other but his embodiment as the independent voice in the text.

The text is an attempt to outline the complex dynamics of Tomasz Pułka’s poetic register. This register is marked by a certain decaying tendency, as a result of which the exploration of “the poles of subjectivity” postulated by the poet is connected with the danger of losing control over a poem. In the face of the pressing “passion of the abolition” – understood in the aesthetic-existential context as the interruption of productive processes of subjectification – Pułka abandons formal discipline and returns to poems that are surprisingly transparent, almost confessional.

Article reviews the Polish translation of two fundamental monographs in global disability studies scholarship: Extraordinary Bodies (1997) and Staring: How We Look (2009) by Rosemary Garland-Thomson. First, books are discussed in the context of global disability studies, with special attention paid to the influences of the theoretical and methodological frame of literary studies in the 1990s. Secondly, Polish translations are considered an important element of the current establishment of the field of disability studies in Polish academia.

* Artykuł powstał w wyniku realizacji projektu badawczego o nr 2019/35/B/HS2/02287 finansowanego ze środków Narodowego Centrum Nauki.

The article is a review of the book Dezorientacje. Antologia polskiej literatury queer by Alessandro Amenta, Tomasz Kaliściak and Błażej Warkocki, which is the first anthology of Polish queer literature, gathering literary material from XVIIIth century to the present moment. The reviewer concerns particulary the introductory part of the anthology, and puts a few polemical questions around the book’s main assumptions.