Poświatowska is famous for her lyrical poetry, and for her intellectual, passionate yet unsentimental poetry on the themes of death, love, existence, famous historical personages, especially women, as well as her mordant treatment of life, living, being, bees, cats and the sensual qualities of loving, grieving and desiring.

Her first heart operation was performed in Philadelphia, in 1958, her sea passage on the Polish ocean liner MS Batory, the costs of her stay, and the procedure itself, funded by monies gathered in collection by Polish-Americans, and was successful enough to enable her to live for nine more years.

Instead of returning to Poland afterward, she enrolled at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she completed her undergraduate studies in 3 years, commencing with no command of the English language whatsoever.

Then, turning down an offer of graduate admission with full financial support, extended to her by the faculty of Stanford University's Department of Philosophy, she returned to Poland, where she matriculated in Philosophy at the Jagellonian University, Kraków, and died before continuing on to complete the doctorate, as a 4th year student.

If her own poem content, as well as her own poetry translations are any indication, she was influenced by Ezra Pound, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Federico García Lorca, Jacques Prévert, and a bevy of Slovene poets: Kajetan Kovič, Jože Udovič, Saša Vegri, Dane Zajc, as well as the classical Greek philosopher Aristotle, bees, cats, the color red, the texture of fur, Metropolitan Museum of Art's antiquity collections, and her contemporary Black American (Negro) city culture – in particular, the people of New York City, in Harlem.