“And yet, so close / that some confuse” – the role of the poet and a man defined by the locality according to Stanisław Neunert

Abstract

In this article, we analyze and interpret selected poems by Stanisław Neunert (Neumert), a rural poet from the village of Gulcz in the Czarnkowsko-trzcianecki poviat (Greater Poland Voivodeship). Methodologically, we try to incorporate into the formula proposed by Małgorzata Mikołajczak in her “manifesto” of regiopoetry – so, we combine two types of analysis: poetological and cultural. We analyze the way of poetic arrangement (the structure of the free poem, metaphor, ellipticity, idostyle) of several motifs and themes extracted from this poetry: home, nature, cultivated role, metapoetic and autotematic reflection. We pay special attention to the human-place relationship pre-sent in Neunert’s poetry and show the artist’s activity using two concepts derived from geographical and cultural studies – poeta geographicus and poeta localis. It should be added that the text was created in connection with the project “Local biographies” carried out at the Faculty of Polish and Classical Philology at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań in cooperation with the School Complex in Wielen. The authors of the article collaborated with the pupils of the local grammar school over the biography of Neunert, in which analytical and interpretative remarks concerning his poetry were written.