Poems

CHOOSING A PATH

As a student, Stanisław Dróżdż wrote poetry – in 1962 he received an award for his work in the Third Poetry Competition for the Wawrzyn Pałacyku. However, it was only in the year of his graduation, 1964, that he made a conscious decision to choose his creative path. In that same year he made his poetic debut in the Wrocław publication Arka. Informator Klubu Młodzieży Artystycznej ZSP [Information Bulletin of the Artistic Youth Club of the Polish Students’ Union]; from then on he began holding meetings with readers and became a member of the Youth Circle at the Wrocław Branch of the Polish Writers’ Union. His first major success also dates from that year: at the 3rd Poetry Spring in Kłodzko, he received an award from the Wrocław monthly Odra in the Single Poem Competition. A year later, at the subsequent edition of the Kłodzko Spring, he received the same award again, while also winning the main prize – the Crystal Lion Award.

WROCŁAW LITERARY ENVIRONMENT     

Stanisław Dróżdż’s early work should be considered against the broader literary context of Wrocław in the early 1960s. At that time, there was no student periodical that could function as a forum for the younger generation, while Odra was regarded as a platform of the “old guard.” Gradually, however, the situation began to change.

In 1964, the Agora Literary Group was established (including Lothar Herbst, Marek Garbala, Bogusław Sławomir Kunda, Stefan Bednarek, Jerzy Jastrzębski, Michał Fostowicz-Zahorski and Andrzej Zawada; and, from outside Wrocław, Stanisław Barańczak and Andrzej Krzysztof Waśkiewicz). The group made its debut in the 1964 issue of Arka, and in May of that year the monthly Agora was founded – alongside Warsaw’s Orientacja, it became one of the most important periodicals for young authors at the time. A year later, on their initiative, the first youth bulletin, Pomosty [Bridges], was published.

The Literary Group 66 (including Janusz Styczeń, Jerzy Pluta, Ernest Dyczek and Bogusław Kierc) was also active between 1966 and 1972. They published the magazine Kontrasty [Contrasts] and organised the Wrocław Confrontations of Young Poets twice, in 1969 and 1970. Moreover, since 1961 the Kłodzko Poetry Spring had been organised regularly, serving as an important meeting place for writers of the period. From 1972 onwards, the magazine Konfrontacje [Confrontations] likewise opened its pages to young authors.

Stanisław Dróżdż made his debut alongside the Agora Group in Arka; his works were subsequently published in the group’s magazine of the same name, where the first review of his concrete poetry by Marek Garbala also appeared. In addition, Bogusław Sławomir Kunda and Andrzej Krzysztof Waśkiewicz wrote about his work. Members of Group ‘66 were equally attentive to his activity: Janusz Styczeń delivered the introductory lecture at the first evening devoted to concrete poetry in 1968, and Ernest Dyczek, inspired by the concrete poet’s work was – is – will be, wrote the short story Remanent [Stock-taking] in 1969. In that same year, Dróżdż received a prize at the Wrocław Confrontations of Young Poets. He also regularly attended the Kłodzko Springs, from which he returned with further awards. In this way he operated among various literary groups without formally aligning himself with any of them. Significantly, as a concrete poet he was already being mentioned alongside these groups as representing an almost separate poetic orientation.

POEMS

Stanisław Dróżdż’s early works underwent an internal evolution from lyric poetry to gnomic poetry, gradually approaching a form that was almost poetry without words. Their existential themes concentrate on problems of transience, existence, the passage of time, and the fate of the individual.

Within this poetry one observes a gradual disappearance of the lyrical subject and the lyrical situation. Their place is taken by increasing formal rigour and an almost mathematical precision – a work thoroughly thought-over down to the smallest detail.

The connections between Dróżdż’s concrete poetry and his earlier traditional poetry have not yet been sufficiently recognised, even though the author himself stated: “Concept-shapes are for me a higher and inevitable degree of consistency, resulting from the gnomic poetry I created earlier and am creating now.” The characteristic condensation of meaning, ascetic form and specific thematic focus can readily be found in his later, already concretist, work.

Long after he had programmatically embraced concretist practice, Stanisław Dróżdż continued to write traditional poems. He accumulated enough material for four or five volumes and himself claimed that it was “poetry written in a traditional form, but concretist in content”. He did not live to see his book debut; only after his death, in 2016, was a volume of his poems published together with English translations: Pozasłowne śródsłów międzysłowia / Inwards Beyond the Words Between.

This phase of Stanisław Dróżdż’s life, although highly productive and heralding the possibility of a distinguished poetic career, appears in retrospect merely as a prelude.