Such a formulation of this question also results partly from the Polish understanding of the label of an American poet. Not only because the question of the poet’s American traits, posed ever more eagerly today, hides the assumption that it refers to his California period treated as a phase of life and creativity which is closed both temporally and intellectually. For various reasons, it has not been the subject of investigations and research. Little is known about the postwar period, when Miłosz built this extensive awareness. He returned to America as someone familiar with its realities and its lifestyle, with the reasoning and actions of its people, aware of many local customs and problems, well versed in various circulations of culture and information, fluent in English, with a rich and current knowledge of the literature of the linguistic circles that permeated it. However, one has to return to the landmark year of 1960, when Miłosz had only set off for Berkeley, and ask about the awareness with which he discovered America, where he spent those consequential five years fifteen years before, and where he apparently took refuge from the consequences of the Sovietization of his native part of Europe.
He is an American poet to the extent that his work was influenced by the thought and work of those cultural circles. Miłosz is to them an American poet, in a biographical sense, from the time he started living at Grizzly Peak until his return to Krakow, and in a symbolic sense, for as long as he cooperated with the publishing market, participated in literary life, and was an ambassador of Polish literature across the ocean. To Polish readers, this description is mainly related to the moment of his departure from Europe to take up employment at the University of California in Berkeley, and his settlement for many years in California, where his new poems and essays were written.
This means one thing in Poland, and something else in the United States.
Czesław Miłosz is at times called an American poet.
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