After World War II, he moved to Poland, where he graduated from Marie Curie High School No.

In 1971–1973 he worked at the editorial office of the Kraków-based Student magazine where he met many prominent members of the generation of the Polish New Wave (1968–1976) including Adam Zagajewski and Stanisław Barańczak.

In 1980, he took part in a hunger strike in St. Christopher's Church in Podkowa Leśna as an act of solidarity with the detained political dissidents Dariusz Kobzdej and Mirosław Chojecki.

Nowadays, Krynicki is seen as one of the foremost representatives of contemporary Polish poetry alongside Adam Zagajewski and Ewa Lipska.

[4] His early poems contain a wealth of poetic devices and evoke gloomy imagery which presents reality as "a nightmare of chaos, emptiness and nothingness".

The feeling of oppression and hostility characteristic of his works in this period can be interpreted in political, ethical and metaphysical aspects.