The Sound of Modern Polish Poetry

Performance and Recording after World War II

Aleksandra Kremer

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Hardback

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English

Harvard University Press
07 December 2021

Other performing arts; Literary studies: from c 1900 -; Literary studies: poetry & poets; European history; Politics & government

"An illuminating new study of modern Polish verse in performance, offering a major reassessment of the roles of poets and poetry in twentieth-century Polish culture.

What's in a voice? Why record oneself reading a poem that also exists on paper? In recent decades, scholars have sought to answer these questions, giving due credit to the art of poetry performance in the anglophone world. Now Aleksandra Kremer trains a sharp ear on modern Polish poetry, assessing the rising importance of authorial sound recordings during the tumultuous twentieth century in Eastern Europe.

Kremer traces the adoption by key Polish poets of performance practices intimately tied to new media. In Polish hands, tape recording became something different from what it had been in the West, shaped by its distinctive origins behind the Iron Curtain. The Sound of Modern Polish Poetry reconstructs the historical conditions, audio technologies, and personal motivations that informed poetic performances by such luminaries as Czesław Miłosz, Wisława Szymborska, Aleksander Wat, Zbigniew Herbert, Miron Białoszewski, Anna Swir, and Tadeusz Różewicz. Through performances both public and private, prepared and improvised, professional and amateur, these poets tested the possibilities of the physical voice and introduced new poetic practices, reading styles, and genres to the Polish literary scene. Recording became, for these artists, a means of announcing their ambiguous place between worlds.

Kremer's is a work of criticism as well as recovery, deploying speech-analysis software to shed light on forgotten audio experiments-from poetic ""sound postcards,"" to unusual home performances, to the final testaments of writer-performers. Collectively, their voices reveal new aesthetics of poetry reading and novel concepts of the poetic self."

By: Aleksandra Kremer
Imprint: Harvard University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9780674261112
ISBN 10: 0674261119
Pages: 376
Publication Date: 07 December 2021
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Aleksandra Kremer is Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University and the author of Przypadki poezji konkretnej. Studia pięciu książek (The twists and turns of concrete poetry: Case studies of five books).

Reviews for The Sound of Modern Polish Poetry: Performance and Recording after World War II

Erudite, lively, and brilliant, this book examines Polish culture through an original point of entry: poetry performance. Exploring the audio practices of canonical modern poets within the context of history, Kremer achieves a true breakthrough in literary and performance studies. -- Irena Grudzinska-Gross, author of Czeslaw Milosz and Joseph Brodsky: Fellowship of Poets An exemplary study of poets' sound recordings, public and private, in postwar Poland. Aleksandra Kremer reads poetic performance styles through history, aesthetics, national culture, ideology, and translation, often using machine-assisted prosodic analysis. Her close listenings reveal the many ways in which poets' voicings exceed their texts. -- Charles Bernstein, author of Close Listening: Poetry and the Performed Word Aleksandra Kremer makes a compelling case for modern Polish culture as a 'laboratory of poetry performance' in this original, masterfully researched study. It is a must-read not just for specialists, but for anyone interested in post-war Polish writing or indeed, in new ways of combining the humanities with technology while doing full justice to both. -- Clare Cavanagh, author of Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West