Apotheosis of Music: Selected Poems

Witold Wirpsza's poetry belongs to an experimental and intellectual current less present in the Whitmanian English-language tradition. Reveling in spoof, buffoonery, the grotesque, paradox, hyperbole, and nonsense, his work employs every poetic means to undermine our propensity to take what is being said at face value. His linguistic explorations stem from a mistrust in language as an adequate means of communication and a scrutiny of its susceptibility to abuse and misuse for political ends. By turns 'difficult,' abstract, darkly humorous, his poetry is steeped in ethical and social concerns. This collection draws from his many books, covering a period from the late 1940s to the 1980s, and includes poetic cycles on Stalin, on music, on dance, and the 1955 exhibit, The Family of Man.