The multimedia book Waruj (2019) by graphic designer Joanna Łańcucka and poet Joanna Mueller is constructed from two equivalent components: poems and comic charts. This combination has been referred to in promotional materials and the reception of the volume as a poemic. The author of the article explains why this interpretation of the genre turns out to be an extension of its previous formula. First, she discusses Łańcucka’s work in the context of a narrowly conceived poemic, then the subject of analysis is the verbal–visual “syntax” of the entire two-author artist book, conceived as a conceptual book. It indicates the rules of combining graphic and verse elements, which are implemented on the basis of similarity, complementarity, contrast and even competition. The article also traces strategies for achieving coherence in the volume against the linear order of reception, as the researcher reveals leitmotifs and the book’s peculiar infrastructure in the form of recognisable commonplaces. It proves to be important that poems and comic graphics correspond with each other in terms of larger semantic structures (transmedially realised leitmotifs and remix strategies) and formal structures (“architectonics”).

The aim of the article is to analyze and attempt to classify two juvenile texts by Julian Kornhauser which refer to painting works – Martwa natura z kompotierką (Bernard Buffet) and Guernica (Pablo Picasso). By delving into the works of the author of Origami, it is worth devoting a moment of attention to the images, as painting remains an extremely important source of reference for this work. However, the selected examples for analysis do not fit within the definitional framework of ekphrasis or hypotyposis. Importantly, the analysis of the selected texts also leads to the discovery of poetic connections between Kornhauser and surrealism, mainly in the Bretonian edition, thus allowing for the identification of interpretative sign posts that prove to be extremely helpful while reading subsequent, especially those published in the 1970s, poems and novels by the author of Zjadacze kartofli. The interpretation of juvenile poems therefore justifies the search in this work not only for experiments that elude methodological delimitations but also serves as evidence of correlations between Kornhauser’s poetry and avant-garde poetics.

This article refers to the transgressive dimension of plastic explored today in experimental poetic practices. The author refers to Lynn Keller and devotes attention to the “poetry of conscious Anthropocene”, examples of which are analyzed in terms of introducing visual elements into poetic volumes, and the epistemological consequences of reaching for anachronistic, modernist techniques of combining visual and discursive areas in poetry. In the poetic projects discussed, there are clear references to plastic – not only as a topic, but also as an organizing principle of the volumes. The author shows the ways of a poetic manifestation of aesthetics, ontology and economy of plastic, and also portrays post-media poetry as a cognitive practice revealing non-obvious reconfigurations of plastic.

The answer to the question on new communication situations, that interactive fiction places us in, allows us to understand what methods of cultural expression we use to adapt the language of art to new audience expectations. First of all, the sign relations that arise at the junction of the triadic relationship: an author – machine – recipient should be analyzed. The article is an attempt at a structural analysis of the manifestations of digital textuality. The author uses literary methodology to emphasize the sense-making properties of interactive language. Structural relations are discussed using examples taken from video
games. The semiotic possibilities of natural language and programming code are described, and the issue of the narrativity of interactive works is raised. The author also raises the problem of contemporary reception competences on the example of the so-called code poetry. The text also includes an original model
of structural-semiotic relations, which is used to outline the sending and receiving situation in an interactive digital text.

The article provides an interdisciplinary analysis of a part Piosenki nie śpiewane Żonie, included in the collection Chirurgiczna precyzja: elegie i piosenki z lat 1995–1997 by Stanisław Barańczak. The author focuses on the aspect of musicality in the poems, especially in the context of so-called latent musicality, which
manifests in these poems through the transposition of musical genres and forms into the realm of literature. Based on Andrzej Hejmej’s categorization of musicality, the author distinguishes intermedial phenomena; she examines the poems separately and in the perspective of the part of the collection identified by Barańczak, often marginalized, which is a love confession to his wife. Through a formal analysis of the structure of musical genres – both classical and popular (madrigal, aria, blues, alba, serenade) – to which the poet referred to in the titles of his poems, the author uncovers new interpretative clues hidden in the construction of the poems. Her analysis confirms the critics’ opinion on Stanisław Barańczak’s masterful poetic craftsmanship and virtuosity in handling the form of the text.

Anna Kałuża’s conversation with Jadwiga Sawicka, painter, author of textual installations, photographs and objects, focuses primarily on the relationship between visual (pictorial) and textual (written) objects. Sawicka, referring to her works (among others Lucky You, Halka, Spódnica, Sama w lesie, Sama w domu, video collage), talks about the relationship between clothes and signs, letters and images. The conversation also revolves around the question of the politicality of art, its institutional conditions, and the different ways of seeing the linguistic context of paintings.

The article deals with the process of formulating the subjectivity in Bolesław Miciński’s “Journeys to hells”. The main research tool for the analysis and interpretation of the essay is Hans Blumenberg’s idea of metaphorology. The interpretation is guided by the two thinkers’ shared view of issues concerning philosophical language – both, in their own way, shunned linguistic conceptualization of any sort. Blumenberg’s metaphor of terra incognita, as interpreted by Miciński, is utilized in diverse ways to present the image of the world as well as individual and social dimensions of human existence. The notion of “journey”, a problematic thread of modernity and psychoanalysis allow the author to highlight the imaginative potential inherent in the metaphor itself. Considering the “travelers” significant for Miciński, namely Odysseus and Descartes, as well as a stylistic richness of the analyzed essay, allows for showing that the metaphor of “unknown lands” can be useful in interpretation. The aim of the article aims to present the subjectivity presented in “Journeys to Hell” which, manifesting itself in a metaphorical language distant from discursive counterparts, does not fit into any conceptual forms.