Aleksandra Kremer is Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University and the author of Przypadki poezji konkretnej. Studia pieciu ksiazek (The twists and turns of concrete poetry: Case studies of five books).
Kremer shows...public poetry readings, especially in times of
upheaval, were lofty, almost religious events...It is precisely
through those authorial renditions, however, that we can glimpse
the intricate relationships between the poet, the poem and the
audience. Kremer investigates this rarely researched area using the
recordings of several prominent Polish poets born in the first
decades of the twentieth century. Her method is an odd but
effective combination of machine-assisted, quantitative analysis of
the poets' pitch, stress and intonation with impressionistic
digressions about their art, life and sociopolitical
involvements...Kremer captures the moment when poetry ceases to be
fixed on a page and enters time, with all its ephemerality and
contingency. -- Jaroslaw Anders * Times Literary Supplement *
Brilliant...The Sound of Modern Polish Poetry is an
impressive work of scholarship...Given the dearth of scholarship on
Polish literature in English, this is a wonderful addition to
knowledge, and one that will delight any reader interested in
Polish poetry, culture and history. -- E. M. Stanczyk * Slavonic
and East European Review *
An impeccably researched, well-argued, and original work of
scholarship. It is also an erudite and highly readable history of
twentieth-century Polish literature and the individuals who shaped
it...The book's unique approach will doubtless appeal to many
readers and open new avenues of research on the intersection
between literature, performance, and technology. -- Lukasz
Wodzynski * Russian Review *
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
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
Listening closely to an audio archive of postwar Polish poets
including Milosz, Herbert, Rozewicz, and Szymborska, Aleksandra
Kremer shows how each one navigated the cultural and political
pressure to embody the Polish people and country. These writers
strove to recapture the singularity of everyday speech, wresting
their voices from the state and the dramatic stage actors who often
performed poetry. The paradox at the center of this rich account is
how the strategic downsizing enabled by tape recording ultimately
expanded Polish poets' range of address. -- Lytle Shaw, author of
Narrowcast: Poetry and Audio Research
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 postwar 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
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