Politics of the Poetic Form: Adam Ważyk and the Americans

Abstract

The article discusses Adam Ważyk – one of the foremost representatives of the Polish poetic avant-garde – and his meta-poetic reflection on the form of the poem in comparison with the paralel considerations offered, later in the 20th c., by the American poets of the LANGUAGE movement. Most importantly, I mention Adrienne Rich, Muriel Rukeyser, Ron Silliman, and James Scully. These poets saw the poetic practice as part of the active and reconstructive approach to everyday reality, which is an approach that sets them apart from more theoretically predisposed strands of the Marxist literary theory which saw poetic forms mostly as an epiphenomenon of social forces and processes. The idea that is the strongest link between Ważyk and the American poets mentioned above is treating formal poetic innovation as precisely the element that serves the causes of enhancing the potential of language and communication.