Ameryka w poezji Anny Frajlich

Abstract

AMERICA IN ANNA FRAJLICH’S POETRY This article focuses on the representations of the United States in Anna Frajlich’s autobiographical work. Selected poems explore the transformations in her perception of their country of immigration. At first, the poet introduces America as a place of banishment after the events in Poland in March 1968, as a country where it is possible to live but difficult to feel at home. Later, she emphasises the beauty and delight over the American landscape and culture, and of New York in particular. Finally, she presents America as her new home and the place where she has put down new roots. However, this is not the end of the pilgrimage for the poet because for the Jewish nation that she is part of, this end never comes. Therefore, in the last volume of poetry, New York is referred to as “a boat and a haven” rather than a port. A change in thinking about herself and her life is the result of the transformation of the subject’s perception of America. The banished woman gradually accepts her fate, gets used to it and decides to live in the present. However, she does not reject the past which has largely determined her identity. If it had not been for her Jewish origin she would not have been banished from Poland. It leads the poet to a better self-understanding, to a new definition of herself as a human being, a woman, a Jew, a Pole and an American.