Miron Bialoszewski is a singular phenomenon not only in the context of postwar Polish poetry but also of Western poetry in general. After the consolidation of the communist regime, the Party sought to extend control over all aspects of cultural activity, at the levels of both high and popular culture. In the case of literature this control meant the imposition in 1949 of socialist realism, which formally and stylistically derived its models from neoclassicist and nineteenth-century realist poetics, while ideologically it entailed following the Party line. After Joseph Stalin's death, and especially after the mid 1950s, the continuing though somewhat less rigid control over cultural life produced a threefold division among the writers: those who dutifully toed the Party line and acted as its cultural functionaries; those who practiced accommodation but at the same time tried, by employing various strategems, including Aesopian language, to achieve a measure of authentic...