SOURCE: “Gurus and Gadflies,” in Parnassus: Poetry in Review, Vols. 18–19, Nos. 1–2, 1993, pp. 100–20.

In the following excerpt, Marx traces Różewicz's attempt to capture life in postwar Poland through the poetry of They Came to See a Poet.

Now in his 70's, Polish poet Tadeusz Różewicz has always treated poetry as a zero sum game, struggling to evolve a language that adequately expresses the political deterioration of Poland after World War II. From this comes his rejection of high culture, his fundamental disdain of rhetoric, and his transparency of style, which have made him one of his country's most popular poets. Yet for all of his work's personal intensity, Różewicz is an example of [Adam] Zagajewski's ontological poet, in this case a writer who has made skepticism, rather than belief, into an absolute. Scorning words as reality's betrayers, Różewicz sacrifices the beautiful on the altar of...