ABSTRACT
In the early 1980s, when the so-called Polish school of poetry seemed to many young poets dated and unexciting, a slim book of translations was published which redefined Polish poetry for the next few decades. It was a collection of poems by Frank O'Hara, rendered into Polish by Piotr Sommer, a poet in his own right. The book successfully questioned the dominating paradigm of politically engaged, self-righteous, parabolic verse, offering instead poetry which, using the rhythms of living speech, prioritised personal experience, individuality, everydayness, and humour. Sommer's translations of O'Hara's poems inspired hosts of followers, with critics coining the term ‘O'Harism’ for the new movement. Particularly interesting were not only numerous poems which imitated the American poet's diction but also the ones which were (to use the term from popular music) ‘covers’ of O'Hara's specific poems, their self-conscious replicas, remakes, palimpsests, pastiches, and creative appropriations. Despite rich critical literature which accompanied them, it seems to have passed unnoticed that the poems which Polish poets had been copying were not O'Hara's texts, but Sommer's translations of them. The aim of the chapter is to demonstrate how these translations, in the light of Even-Zohar's theory, connected with innovatory repertoires of the Polish literary polysystem.
