This article discusses the literary dispute over Kazimiera Illakowiczowna’s poetry collected in the Szeptem volume (1966). The dispute started with an ironic review by a young literary critic, Stanislaw Baranczak, in the “Nurt” magazine published in Poznan. The article’s author interprets three aspects of the dispute: its legend-creating impact on Illakowiczowna as a literary institution, its destructive nature against Illakowiczowna as a canonical poet and the dispute’s status in the literary circles of the 1960s. The article provides evidence that Baranczak’s pamphlet hit the poetics and legend of Illakowiczowna; what is more, it triggered off a self-repair mechanism of the canon, reinforcing and sealing it from the pressure exerted by the young poets and critics in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. This mechanism, ephemeral from the point of view of the dynamics of literary circles, ultimately carved in stone the legend of Illakowiczowna, preventing new interpretations of her poetry and biography.