Dialogue and Influence: Essays on Polish and American Poets

Dialogue and Influence weds a commitment to translation studies to historical and conceptual questions about translation, literary influence, and global literary networks by highlighting the fantastically generative dialogue that Polish and American poets have engaged in since the 1960s. They have translated each other’s work and learned how to write new kinds of poems in the process. In some cases, they have written poems addressed to each other. The canons of Polish poetry in the US and of American poetry in Poland are necessarily missing some key figures, but they are constantly being revised, with new names and works added every year, including writings by translingual Polish American poets who straddle both literary communities. These essays celebrate the ongoing transfer while also setting up the stage for things to come.