Autothematic Description in Poetry by Women: The Case of Joanna Pollakówna

Joanna Grądziel-Wójcik

A b s t r a c t

The article discusses autothematic description as a technique of metapoetic reflection. On the one hand, it is analyzed in the context of the structuralist theory of description and on the other hand, in the context of poetry by women, where meta-reflection is an important but underresearched phenomenon. Many poets use autothematic writing not because they want to problematize the poetic medium, which is to create Barthes’s “reality effect,” but because they want to construct their individual epistemological projects and inform the speaking “I.” I analyze poems by Wisława Szymborska, Julia Hartwig, Bogumiła Latawiec and Halina Poświatowska and interpret a poem by Joanna Pollakówna anew.