The article analyzes works created by two Polish artists, Diana Lelonek’s “Endling” (2022) and Anna Kędziora’s “Plantae malum” (2021). Both artists move smoothly between photography and spatial installations. By displaying objects and images as though they were scientific exhibits, they address the relationship between humans and the natural environment and reveal mechanisms of exclusion and extermination. The word “endling” stands for the last representative of a species, while “plantae malum” for “weeds,” plants perceived from an anthropocentric perspective as “bad plants” and therefore intended for extermination. Lelonek’s and Kędziora’s works are not only visual and spatial, but also “intertextual” in that they weave narratives about the environment and are rich in cultural references and scientific associations. Marianna Michałowska has placed the selected case studies in the context of ecocultural studies (Ewa Rewers), ecocriticism (Timothy Clark) and the visual culture of ecology (T.J. Demos’s concept). Each of these concepts emphasizes the cultural-natural entanglements of artistic works, and – as in the case of the visual culture of ecology – the need to abandon the traditional aesthetics in favor of studies on legal, political and economic relations that influence the circulation of images.

Taking the current debate on the relationship and interrelationships between artistic media as my departure point, in this article I discuss the work of Man Ray, one of the most recognizable representatives of early modernism, whose achievements, especially literary, are still too little known as examples of modernist artistic self-consciousness. Reclaiming his visual works, writings and various multimedia hybrids as a rich historical source can, in my opinion, help to make visible and “recover” for the contemporary discourse on the transmedial condition what Rosalind Krauss dubs the “inner lining” of a medium or form and Marjorie Perloff, quoting Khlebnikov, describes as the “strings of the alphabet” hidden by “phantoms” or Wittgensteinian “imaginings”. The art of Man Ray, unjustifiably considered by many “lightweight”, attests to the validity of Walter Benjamin’s assertions about the importance of any particular medium or technological form for, as Krauss has it, “restructuring the condition of the other arts”. In his visual and verbal realizations (which he called visual poetry), one can discern traces that Perloff has been following for years in her search for “the unfulfillednpromise of the revolutionary poetic impulse”, pointing to what, though difficult to name, exists “in between”, in the Duchampian realm of inframince. Captured in words and images, reflection on such matters is omnipresent in Man Ray, but its depth and multiple meanings acquire a new dimension when his canvases, collages, constructions, photographs, rayographs or films are “read” in the context of his surprisingly rich and varied writings. “Recovering” the multitude of themes and motifs contained in them is significant as another, to many quite unexpected, confirmation of the endurance of the avant-garde gesture.

The author of this article attempts to analyse the phenomenon occurring in many of Tadeusz Różewicz’s poems, which consists in a special relationship between vision, imagery and visuality and the appearance (or recurrence) of the dead. This phenomenon is mainly interpreted in relation to Jacques Derrida’s hauntology and Władysław Strzemiński’s Teoria Widzenia and his notion of the after-image. The starting point of the analysis is the reconstruction of Różewicz’s ambivalent position regarding the image-poetry relationship (the poet’s simultaneous emphasis on the primacy of the visual in his imagination and his desire to reject the aesthetic image-metaphor). Through readings of specific works of Różewicz (mainly Wiersz pisany o świcie, Spojrzała w słońce, Światła cienia), the author of the article proves that in the analysed work there is a contamination of perception and remembrance, in which the present is marked by a spectral, indelible trace of the past, and memory is mediated by visuality. He also points to the complex relationship between life and death (light and darkness), as well as the ethical orientation of the phenomenon in question, relating it to Derridean spectral ethics.

Within the analysis of the correspondence between visual media and literature, the author proposes to look at – firstly – how writers who are also photographers combine both of these functions in their work, and secondly – to consider whether it is possible to see this photographic awareness in the poetry written by them. The article presents a particular, photo-literary subjectivity on the example of Małgorzata Lebda’s Sny uckermärkerów and Wojciech Wilczyk’s Realizm in a phenomenological perspective, taking into account research on photo-texts and Marta Koszowy’s inquiries on the mediating role of photography in contemporary Polish prose. The point of departure for the comparative analysis is the eponymous punctum of absence, i.e. the photographically conditioned deficiency that dominates both poetic volumes.

The article presents the analysis of the verbal-visual works of Karolina Wiktor in the context of the 20th-century avant-garde experiments with language, including a font. By referring to the works of Tytus Czyżewski, based on a content quotation, the artist repeats the creative act and refers to the practice of avant-garde play with the matter of language, while supplementing the text of Czyżewski’s works with new visual elements. The practice of experimenting with words and images allows the artist to talk about the experience of aphasia, which causes limitations in creative skills and agency. Aphasia is an important context in the analyzed work, conditioning creative possibilities, influencing the pace of work, and determining the direction of intertextual play. The article also traces the process of moving away from the repetition strategy towards the poetic strategy, an example of which is the “missing font”. The design of this font is compared to the avant-garde alphabet by Władysław Strzemiński, which made it possible to describe the formal procedures used by the artists and the functions of the fonts created.

The article is an attempt to analyze Blason du corps féminin by French-language spatial poet Ilse Garnier. It reflects on the logo-visual strategy of Garnier’s feminist recovery of blason, a literary genre popular in the 16th century France. Then, using the theories of Tim Ingold and Wassily Kandinsky, it examines the relationship between plane, line and letter and their functions in the story of the female body. The relationship between line shape and affect is also discussed, as well as the rhythmicity of Garnier’s works in relation to the theories and works of Władysław Strzemiński and Katarzyna Kobro. The choreographic potential of the work is also outlined, with reference to the records of dance choreographers. Finally, the poet’s drawing-and-writing process is traced: drawing with a compass, the choreography of gestures (considerations have been based mainly on texts by Tim Ingold and André Leroi-Gourhan), kinetic energy, the role of the typewriter important for Garnier, and the associated tension between the subject’s gesture
and her absence.

The motto of this issue – Literatura jak się patrzy! [A Spot-On Literature] – is directly connected with the literary texts published in the Presentations section. Solarysze is a set of new poems by Marcin Mokry, author of the
volumes czytanie. Pisma, Świergot and żywe linie nowe usta. In the experimental forms of Mokry’s poetry, word and image enter into unexpected alliances. The texts are accompanied by ‘machine’ realisations of concrete poetry.

Maciej Mazur’s conversation with Marcin Mokry concerns four of his poetry projects: Czytania na Wielki Tydzień (2012) – a project posted on the poet’s blog, the print debut czytanie. Pisma (2017), Świergot (2019) and żywe linie nowe usta (2022). Marcin Mokry talks about the role of narrative thinking on history, poetic strategies for ‘erasing’ words and phrases, and the sources of iinspiration for the experimental forms of his works, i.e., among other things, the use of ‘dots and dashes’ to fill the space between words. Another topic of conversation is the meaning of field flowers in Świergot, the problem of the status and permanence of a poem posted on a website, and finally the relationship between poetry and literary studies.

The article summarizes the current state of research on Marcin Mokry’s work and takes the challenge of breaking the clichés and labels of literary criticism that have appeared in the reception of this poetry. The author of the text confronts the too hasty association of the concept of Mokry’s poems with the tradition of concrete poetry, as well as burdening this artistic project with revolutionary pressures that are usually imposed on literary attempts to renew the avant-garde in the field of contemporary Polish poetry. Mokry’s texts are read by the author of the article as examples of a consistent approach to an important poetic genealogy of the long 20th century – the tradition of postlinear poetry. This context allows us to open a close reading of several poems from three books by Marcin Mokry (czytanie. Pisma, Świergot, żywe linie nowe usta) and, at the same time, emphasize the action of these works designed by the poet on the page of the poetry volume. Mokry is ultimately presented as a poet of the “theatre of the page”.

This article aims to present Marcin Mokry’s poetry. It interprets three texts from which conclusions can be drawn that are representative of his three so far published poetry volumes. The poems are analyzed in the context of literary tradition (experiment, avant-garde, concrete poetry), and, at the same time, constitute a contribution to theoretical and literary considerations concerning such concepts as open work, information, and noise. The last part of this article suggests a solution to interpretative and theoretical problems resulting from
reading Mokry’s works with the use of tools developed by Espen J. Aarseth.

In her article, Justyna Teterwak presents documents from the archives of Konrad Bielski and Józef Czechowicz, which include letters and materials containing Bielski’s juvenilia (Bielski’s rough drafts and copies of his poems made by Czechowicz). The analysis of individual pages of these autographs has allowed Teterwak to fill some gaps in the current biographical knowledge on the relationship between the members of the group Reflektor and its dynamics (from Bielski’s mentoring position to Czechowicz’s independence from the influence of the older poet). It has also allowed her to identify and define the agon (after Harold Bloom) present between the two writers in the process of shaping their creative personalities. Signatures preserved in the manuscripts make it especially noticeable. In Bielski’s rough drafts, one can see the initial stages of the writer’s developing his own signature, marked by the influence, as he repeatedly used Czechowicz’s signature in his attempts to work out his. While imitating the characteristic ligature of the younger writer, Bielski abandoned this idea each time. Those copies of Czechowicz’s signatures were almost invisible or were blurred, admittedly because Bielski was reluctant to use this personal element, especially
one belonging to a friend. It is worth mentioning that Bielski played a great role at the outset of Czechowicz’s literary career, which might have been the main reason for his disinclination to use the younger poet’s ligature in the process of designing his own signature.