SOURCE: “Gardens of Stone: The Poetry of Zbigniew Herbert and Tadeusz Rozewicz,” in The Mature Laurel: Essays on Modern Polish Poetry, edited by Adam Czerniawski, Seren Books, 1991, pp. 173–88.

Coates is an assistant professor of English at McGill University and author of literary theory. In the following essay, he analyzes the differing styles of Zbigniew Herbert and Tadeusz Różewicz and each poet's approach to humanity.

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There are several possible ways of describing the tremendously subtle mechanism of checks and balances that regulates Herbert's poetry. One could say that in it the incidental becomes central, or—in the terms of his book of essays on European art and culture—the barbarian enters the garden.¹ Here the word ‘barbarian’ bears spruce inverted commas, and is as dapper as pinstripes: the man classified as a ‘barbarian’ (a denizen of ‘Eastern Europe’, for instance, from the forested edge of the steppes...