SOURCE: "Gurus and Gadflies," in Parnassus, Vol. 18, No. 2, 1993, pp. 100-06.

In the following excerpt, Marx claims that our expectations for poetry have changed since the end of the Cold War, and examines Zagajewski's poetry in relationship to this changing aesthetic

With freedom comes the inevitable trip back to prison for Central European poets. Not the boxes created by a class, a party, or a dictator, but the dusty eater-corners used moral exemplars are bundled into. For decades in the West, Central European poets were chiefly admired for their heroism and tenacity—they were embodiments of our guilty fantasy that persecution is not only good for the soul but essential for art. Aesthetics took a back seat to ethical, or political, admiration. Central European poets are still greeted with obligatory salutes to their civic gravity, but now the homage sounds like special pleading. With the Cold War over, critics...