ABSTRACT
Despite early work in socialist realism, to readers intent on toeing the official line Wirpsza’s stylistic accessibility foundered against an ideological heterodoxy bordering on outright cynicism. The lyric cycle that Wirpsza composed in response to The Family of Man provides an excellent introduction to his work, as well as an essential tonic to Carl Sandburg's exuberant commentary to the original exhibition. Yet these interpretive failures do nothing to diminish the poems' artistry or the new meanings that arise from their collision, notably in the three 'contrapuntal studies' that place the photographs and poems into direct, if contradictory, conversation. Whereas the photographsIn heavy frames, against the wallpaper, express nothing, mere Hieratics; just that the retoucher has enhanced their severity (strict morals, perhaps as it had to be). If the collapse of Poland’s Communist regime in 1989 has brought renewed attention to Wirpsza’s work, it has less to do with a relaxation of state controls than with the direction Polish poetry.
