Poeci-tłumacze jako „awangarda” lat 90.

Abstract

Poets-Translators as the “Avant-Garde” of the 1990s David Lehman in his book The Last Avant-Garde. The Making of the New York School of Poets sustains the avant-garde character of the New York School (painters and poets), pointing to the resistance of the public to their works as to one of the symptoms showing their anti-normative and emancipatory message. New experimental poetry in post-transformational Poland of the 1990s was, in general, following the innovations of foreign neo-avant-garde practices – in respect to the methods, interests, and creative ideas. The New York School tradition became the main source of inspiration, due to its reception by poets-translators of the circle of “Literatura na Świecie” magazine: Piotr Sommer, Bohdan Zadura, Andrzej Sosnowski, and Tadeusz Pióro. This article shows that their literary statements on art, which could be seen as programmatic in the avant- -garde way, displayed certain outlines similar to the New York School ideas. One might risk the thesis that at the turn of the centuries in Poland not only American neo-avant-garde poetry aroused the interest of Polish poets-translators. Also the programme of the New York School poets, however vague, became important for their experience and it was being “translated” alongside the poems, though its features would turn out different in Polish conditions.