A look at the country's poetry since the fall of communism. Grand ideas of liberty and revolution have given way to parochialism and Western style navel gazing. The heroes on the barricades have been replaced by people going about everyday life.
Grzegorz Musial's Berliner Tagebuch (1989) and Taste of Ash (1992) appeared on either side of the political fault line that was the collapse of communism in Poland. Collected here, in one volume, these works present the power and urgency of one of Poland's most important young poets. Berliner Tagebuch [Berlin Diary] addresses questions of memory, guilt, and responsibility for the Holocaust, as well as the poet's desire to resist the cruelty of time. In Taste of Ash, Musial encounters the state not merely of his own country but of Western civilization too, with love poems and spiritual dialogues of intimacy and wonder.
Being Poland offers a unique analysis of the cultural developments that took place in Poland after World War One, a period marked by Poland’s return to independence. Conceived to address the lack of critical scholarship on Poland’s cultural restoration, Being Poland illuminates the continuities, paradoxes, and contradictions of Poland’s modern and contemporary cultural practices, and challenges the narrative typically prescribed to Polish literature and film. Reflecting the radical changes, rifts, and restorations that swept through Poland in this period, Polish literature and film reveal a multitude of perspectives. Addressing romantic perceptions of the Polish immigrant, the politics of post-war cinema, poetry, and mass media, Being Poland is a comprehensive reference work written with the intention of exposing an international audience to the explosion of Polish literature and film that emerged in the twentieth century.
This is the first comprehensive, multidisciplinary, and multilingual bibliography on "Women and Gender in East Central Europe and the Balkans (Vol. 1)" and "The Lands of the Former Soviet Union (Vol. 2)" over the past millennium. The coverage encompasses the relevant territories of the Russian, Hapsburg, and Ottoman empires, Germany and Greece, and the Jewish and Roma diasporas. Topics range from legal status and marital customs to economic participation and gender roles, plus unparalleled documentation of women writers and artists, and autobiographical works of all kinds. The volumes include approximately 30,000 bibliographic entries on works published through the end of 2000, as well as web sites and unpublished dissertations. Many of the individual entries are annotated with brief descriptions of major works and the tables of contents for collections and anthologies. The entries are cross-referenced and each volume includes indexes.
The collection of essays The Avant-garde and the Margin: New Territories of the Modernist Avant-garde refigures the critical and historical picture of the modernist avant-garde by introducing a variety of less-commonly discussed geo-artistic sites and dynamics. The contributors explore the multifaceted relations established between the avant-garde “centers” (France, Germany, England, and others) and their counterparts in the cultural “periphery” (Greece, India, Japan, Poland, Quebec, Romania, and the former Yugoslavia), as well as the unique artistic and literary dialogues which these encounters engendered. The primary concern of the anthology is the set of relations established between the center and the margin, the redefinition of which was pivotal for the formulation of the modernist avant-garde aesthetic project itself. While enriching the kaleidoscopic picture of modernism, the essays in this collection also offer new methodological approaches to this polychrome cultural image. In this way, the collection avoids the pitfalls of both the traditional diffusionist/Eurocentric model of the world and the more recent over-relativization of the positions of the margin and the center. In their stead, the anthology proposes a hermeneutics of encounter that is simultaneously “spatial” and “historical,” aware of its limits but convinced of its own necessity.
Poetry. Translated from the Polish by Regina Grol. The most expansive anthology of its kind, AMBERS AGLOW features the work of 30 of Poland's most influential and talented female poets, including Nobel Prize winner Wislawa Szymborska. AMBERS AGLOW gives a vivid portrait of Poland's political and cultural world--before, during and after the fall of Communism. This poignant and powerful collection offers the reader an opportunity to experience the joys, sorrows and humanity of these gifted writers. Featuring the original Polish poems alongside English translations by Regina Grol, this is the seminal collection of an underappreciated body of work.
This 1994 book addresses literary theory and criticism, comparative studies in terms of theme, genre movement and influence, and interdisciplinary perspectives.
An authoritative and comprehensive guide to poetry throughout the world The Princeton Handbook of World Poetries—drawn from the latest edition of the acclaimed Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics—provides a comprehensive and authoritative survey of the history and practice of poetry in more than 100 major regional, national, and diasporic literatures and language traditions around the globe. With more than 165 entries, the book combines broad overviews and focused accounts to give extensive coverage of poetic traditions throughout the world. For students, teachers, researchers, poets, and other readers, it supplies a one-of-a-kind resource, offering in-depth treatment of Indo-European poetries (all the major Celtic, Slavic, Germanic, and Romance languages, and others); ancient Middle Eastern poetries (Hebrew, Persian, Sumerian, and Assyro-Babylonian); subcontinental Indian poetries (Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Urdu, and more); Asian and Pacific poetries (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Mongolian, Nepalese, Thai, and Tibetan); Spanish American poetries (those of Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Chile, and many other Latin American countries); indigenous American poetries (Guaraní, Inuit, and Navajo); and African poetries (those of Ethiopia, Somalia, South Africa, and other countries, and including African languages, English, French, and Portuguese). Complete with an introduction by the editors, this is an essential volume for anyone interested in understanding poetry in an international context. Drawn from the latest edition of the acclaimed Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics Provides more than 165 authoritative entries on poetry in more than 100 regional, national, and diasporic literatures and language traditions throughout the world Features extensive coverage of non-Western poetic traditions Includes an introduction, bibliographies, cross-references, and a general index