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Poems New and Collected
Described by Robert Hass as "unquestionably one of the great living European poets" and by Charles Simic as "one of the finest poets living today," Szymborska mesmerizes her readers with poetry that captivates their minds and captures their hearts. This is the book that her many fans have been anxiously awaiting-the definitive, complete collection of poetry by the Nobel Prize-winning poet, including 164 poems in all, as well as the full text of her Nobel acceptance speech of December 7, 1996, in Stockholm. Beautifully translated by Stanislaw Bara«nczak and Clare Cavanagh, who won a 1996 PEN Translation Prize for their work, this volume is a must-have for all readers of poetry.
296 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1998
250 people are currently reading
4785 people want to read
About the author
Wisława Szymborska
208 books1,551 followersWisława Szymborska (Polish pronunciation: [vʲisˈwava ʂɨmˈbɔrska], born July 2, 1923 in Kórnik, Poland) is a Polish poet, essayist, and translator. She was awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature. In Poland, her books reach sales rivaling prominent prose authors—although she once remarked in a poem entitled "Some like poetry" [Niektórzy lubią poezję] that no more than two out of a thousand people care for the art.
Szymborska frequently employs literary devices such as irony, paradox, contradiction, and understatement, to illuminate philosophical themes and obsessions. Szymborska's compact poems often conjure large existential puzzles, touching on issues of ethical import, and reflecting on the condition of people both as individuals and as members of human society. Szymborska's style is succinct and marked by introspection and wit.
Szymborska's reputation rests on a relatively small body of work: she has not published more than 250 poems to date. She is often described as modest to the point of shyness[citation needed]. She has long been cherished by Polish literary contemporaries (including Czesław Miłosz) and her poetry has been set to music by Zbigniew Preisner. Szymborska became better known internationally after she was awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize. Szymborska's work has been translated into many European languages, as well as into Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese and Chinese.
In 1931, Szymborska's family moved to Kraków. She has been linked with this city, where she studied, worked.
When World War II broke out in 1939, she continued her education in underground lessons. From 1943, she worked as a railroad employee and managed to avoid being deported to Germany as a forced labourer. It was during this time that her career as an artist began with illustrations for an English-language textbook. She also began writing stories and occasional poems.
Beginning in 1945, Szymborska took up studies of Polish language and literature before switching to sociology at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. There she soon became involved in the local writing scene, and met and was influenced by Czesław Miłosz. In March 1945, she published her first poem Szukam słowa ("I seek the word") in the daily paper Dziennik Polski; her poems continued to be published in various newspapers and periodicals for a number of years. In 1948 she quit her studies without a degree, due to her poor financial circumstances; the same year, she married poet Adam Włodek, whom she divorced in 1954. At that time, she was working as a secretary for an educational biweekly magazine as well as an illustrator.
During Stalinism in Poland in 1953 she participated in the defamation of Catholic priests from Kraków who were groundlessly condemned by the ruling Communists to death.[1] Her first book was to be published in 1949, but did not pass censorship as it "did not meet socialist requirements." Like many other intellectuals in post-war Poland, however, Szymborska remained loyal to the PRL official ideology early in her career, signing political petitions and praising Stalin, Lenin and the realities of socialism. This attitude is seen in her debut collection Dlatego żyjemy ("That is what we are living for"), containing the poems Lenin and Młodzieży budującej Nową Hutę ("For the Youth that Builds Nowa Huta"), about the construction of a Stalinist industrial town near Kraków. She also became a member of the ruling Polish United Workers' Party.
Like many Polish intellectuals initially close to the official party line, Szymborska gradually grew estranged from socialist ideology and renounced her earlier political work. Although she did not officially leave the party until 1966, she began to establish contacts with dissidents. As early as 1957, she befriended Jerzy Giedroyc, the editor of the influential Paris-based emigré journal Kultura, to which she also contributed. In 1964 s
Szymborska frequently employs literary devices such as irony, paradox, contradiction, and understatement, to illuminate philosophical themes and obsessions. Szymborska's compact poems often conjure large existential puzzles, touching on issues of ethical import, and reflecting on the condition of people both as individuals and as members of human society. Szymborska's style is succinct and marked by introspection and wit.
Szymborska's reputation rests on a relatively small body of work: she has not published more than 250 poems to date. She is often described as modest to the point of shyness[citation needed]. She has long been cherished by Polish literary contemporaries (including Czesław Miłosz) and her poetry has been set to music by Zbigniew Preisner. Szymborska became better known internationally after she was awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize. Szymborska's work has been translated into many European languages, as well as into Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese and Chinese.
In 1931, Szymborska's family moved to Kraków. She has been linked with this city, where she studied, worked.
When World War II broke out in 1939, she continued her education in underground lessons. From 1943, she worked as a railroad employee and managed to avoid being deported to Germany as a forced labourer. It was during this time that her career as an artist began with illustrations for an English-language textbook. She also began writing stories and occasional poems.
Beginning in 1945, Szymborska took up studies of Polish language and literature before switching to sociology at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. There she soon became involved in the local writing scene, and met and was influenced by Czesław Miłosz. In March 1945, she published her first poem Szukam słowa ("I seek the word") in the daily paper Dziennik Polski; her poems continued to be published in various newspapers and periodicals for a number of years. In 1948 she quit her studies without a degree, due to her poor financial circumstances; the same year, she married poet Adam Włodek, whom she divorced in 1954. At that time, she was working as a secretary for an educational biweekly magazine as well as an illustrator.
During Stalinism in Poland in 1953 she participated in the defamation of Catholic priests from Kraków who were groundlessly condemned by the ruling Communists to death.[1] Her first book was to be published in 1949, but did not pass censorship as it "did not meet socialist requirements." Like many other intellectuals in post-war Poland, however, Szymborska remained loyal to the PRL official ideology early in her career, signing political petitions and praising Stalin, Lenin and the realities of socialism. This attitude is seen in her debut collection Dlatego żyjemy ("That is what we are living for"), containing the poems Lenin and Młodzieży budującej Nową Hutę ("For the Youth that Builds Nowa Huta"), about the construction of a Stalinist industrial town near Kraków. She also became a member of the ruling Polish United Workers' Party.
Like many Polish intellectuals initially close to the official party line, Szymborska gradually grew estranged from socialist ideology and renounced her earlier political work. Although she did not officially leave the party until 1966, she began to establish contacts with dissidents. As early as 1957, she befriended Jerzy Giedroyc, the editor of the influential Paris-based emigré journal Kultura, to which she also contributed. In 1964 s
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March 16, 2022
Just discovered this review, one of the first I ever wrote on here. I’ll keep it as is but 10 years later I still love this poet.
Wisława Szymborska, the recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in literature, has the power to make the reader feel both insignificant and heroic simply for existing. This collection, which spans her career from 1957-97, offers a broad range of Szymborska’s talents. Her eloquent prose is direct and extremely quotable, overflowing with clever witticisms just begging you to go crazy with a highlighter through the pages, and is very accessible, making this a perfect collection for both veteran poetry fanatics and for those who only occasionally dip into the sea of poetry.
Born in 1923, Szymborska was witness to all the horrors of the century from her home in Krakow, Poland. Inspired by another Polish poet, Nobel Laureate Czesław Miłosz (of whom I give the highest of recommendations), she began penning her first poems, as well as short fiction, in the mid-1940’s while serving on the railroads. Despite her first collection being banned at the time, she continued to refine her craft and held close to the party limitations until splitting ways in the mid-60’s. Anyone who has read Miłosz’s The Captive Mind will see why he would applaud her for breaking loose and writing freely. This collection of her poetry does neglect much of her overtly political poems and focuses primarily poems which are more all-encompassing of of humanity.
Poets are poetry, writers are prose-
Prose can hold anything including poetry,
But in poetry there is only room for poetry-
Baring her soul, Szymborska often addresses her self-conscious feelings about being a poet in this collection. ”They publically confess to being poets only reluctantly, as if they were a little ashamed of it” she says in her Nobel Lecture, which, as a nice little addition, is included in this collection. Poetry is often overlooked; I myself admit to being enamored with poetry yet often neglect this art for lengthy periods of time. Poetry is not taken as serious as it should be. Perhaps the traditional teaching of poetry, as I encountered in grade school with much older poems and a focus more on the literary devices and not the beating heart of beauty they create has given many a slight aversion to it, masking it as only for ‘arsty’ folk. There’s always the joke that only poets read poetry, but I feel it has grown much more over the past decade especially as more inclusive publications have been more accessible. Even Szymborska states that it is better and more comfortable to say whatever it is else you do in life that to label yourself as ‘a poet’. With this collection, Szymborska scores a massive victory for poetry and evinces that poetry can be for and understood by the everyperson, and although she may be quite self-conscious while doing so, she bravely puts forth her powerful stanzas. Poems such as Evaluation of an Unwritten Poem shows her ideas of the power of poetry, especially over the absence of poetry that would or could have been written.
The message lying in wait within her poems is often fairly discernable upon the first reading and Szymborska uses very direct and honest language, yet each reread unlocks more and more. Literally anybody could pick this up, flip through, and find a half dozen poems that they feel is a potent statement on the human condition. Which I find wonderful. I often suggest her work for those first getting into poetry for this reason.
Much of her poetry pertains to death. Szymborska takes it upon herself to prepare the reader for their inevitable fate, showing humans as fragile, temporary, and sometimes rather insignificant in the face of eternity. I found it humorous how she occasionally sneaks this in, drawing me near with some tirade and then slapping me across the face with an open palm of mortality. Take, for example, the poem True Love, in which she humorously details how annoying those who are caught up in love are to those around them. This poem wraps up as follows:
Let the people who never find true love
Keep saying that there’s no such thing.
Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.
Heavy stuff right out of the blue. Poems such as Cat in an Empty Apartment or The Suicide’s Room show the void death leaves within the world. However, Syzmborska has one of the most optimistic poems about death I have ever read with On Death, Without Exaggeration. She illustrates death as weak and sloppy, saying death always does the job awkwardly and
can’t even get the things done
that are part of its trade:
dig a grave
make a coffin
clean up after itself
Syzmborska is one of the rare few who place the living on the winning side in a battle against death:
Whoever claims that it’s omnipotent
is himself living proof
that it’s not
There’s no life
that couldn’t be immortal
if only for a moment.
Death
always arrives by that very moment too late.
In vain it tugs at the knob
of the invisible door.
As far as you’ve come
can’t be undone.
Not all of her poetry is gloomy. Much of it deals with the human condition and Szymborska has a signature bemused flair that seeps into her poems about the human fate and place in the universe. She often writes of how the world is seemingly made up of chance, how we by chance became who we are (and that she would never want to be anyone else) and that each second of life is an escape from a chance death (which made me think of life as a game Russian Roulette – each time a near death experience slides by its as if we hear that ‘click’ of safety, but this can only go on so long before that ‘click’ will be the ‘bang!’). Several poems, including my personal favorite Life While-You-Wait give us a Shakespeare-like vision of each human as a actor upon a stage, except life is improvisational acting and there is no rehearsal and no second chance to get it right.
I know nothing of the role I play.
I only know it’ mine, I can’t exchange it.
I have to guess on the spot
just what this play’s all about.
…
If I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance,
or repeat a single Thursday that has passed!
But here comes Friday with a script I haven’t seen”
The link between the past, present and future is often tied tightly within her poems. In a very existential way, Szymborska describes us as being a product of our choices and pasts, a unique chance of actions that created us out of the infinite possible selves. From No Title Needed:
And yet I’m sitting by this river, that’s a fact
And since I’m here
I must have come from somewhere
and before that turned up in many other places,
exactly like the conquerors of nations
before setting sail.
From somber, introspective, morbid to outright funny, Szymborska’s collected poems deliver one treat after another. It could easily be picked up and read at random, but a straight through reading offers a bit more insight to the growth and maturation of the poet. If you are a fan of this often neglected art, do yourself a favor and read some Szymborska. If you are looking to get into poetry, this is a perfect starting point. Keep your pen or highlighter nearby while you read because she is very insightful and delivers gem after gem that you will want to revisit.
4/5
A few recommended poems:
Life While-You-Wait
On Death, Without Exaggeration
Over Wine
An Opinion on the Question of Pornography
I’m Working on the World
4a.m.
No Title Needed
A Contribution to Statistics
Wisława Szymborska, the recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in literature, has the power to make the reader feel both insignificant and heroic simply for existing. This collection, which spans her career from 1957-97, offers a broad range of Szymborska’s talents. Her eloquent prose is direct and extremely quotable, overflowing with clever witticisms just begging you to go crazy with a highlighter through the pages, and is very accessible, making this a perfect collection for both veteran poetry fanatics and for those who only occasionally dip into the sea of poetry.
Born in 1923, Szymborska was witness to all the horrors of the century from her home in Krakow, Poland. Inspired by another Polish poet, Nobel Laureate Czesław Miłosz (of whom I give the highest of recommendations), she began penning her first poems, as well as short fiction, in the mid-1940’s while serving on the railroads. Despite her first collection being banned at the time, she continued to refine her craft and held close to the party limitations until splitting ways in the mid-60’s. Anyone who has read Miłosz’s The Captive Mind will see why he would applaud her for breaking loose and writing freely. This collection of her poetry does neglect much of her overtly political poems and focuses primarily poems which are more all-encompassing of of humanity.
Poets are poetry, writers are prose-
Prose can hold anything including poetry,
But in poetry there is only room for poetry-
Baring her soul, Szymborska often addresses her self-conscious feelings about being a poet in this collection. ”They publically confess to being poets only reluctantly, as if they were a little ashamed of it” she says in her Nobel Lecture, which, as a nice little addition, is included in this collection. Poetry is often overlooked; I myself admit to being enamored with poetry yet often neglect this art for lengthy periods of time. Poetry is not taken as serious as it should be. Perhaps the traditional teaching of poetry, as I encountered in grade school with much older poems and a focus more on the literary devices and not the beating heart of beauty they create has given many a slight aversion to it, masking it as only for ‘arsty’ folk. There’s always the joke that only poets read poetry, but I feel it has grown much more over the past decade especially as more inclusive publications have been more accessible. Even Szymborska states that it is better and more comfortable to say whatever it is else you do in life that to label yourself as ‘a poet’. With this collection, Szymborska scores a massive victory for poetry and evinces that poetry can be for and understood by the everyperson, and although she may be quite self-conscious while doing so, she bravely puts forth her powerful stanzas. Poems such as Evaluation of an Unwritten Poem shows her ideas of the power of poetry, especially over the absence of poetry that would or could have been written.
The message lying in wait within her poems is often fairly discernable upon the first reading and Szymborska uses very direct and honest language, yet each reread unlocks more and more. Literally anybody could pick this up, flip through, and find a half dozen poems that they feel is a potent statement on the human condition. Which I find wonderful. I often suggest her work for those first getting into poetry for this reason.
Much of her poetry pertains to death. Szymborska takes it upon herself to prepare the reader for their inevitable fate, showing humans as fragile, temporary, and sometimes rather insignificant in the face of eternity. I found it humorous how she occasionally sneaks this in, drawing me near with some tirade and then slapping me across the face with an open palm of mortality. Take, for example, the poem True Love, in which she humorously details how annoying those who are caught up in love are to those around them. This poem wraps up as follows:
Let the people who never find true love
Keep saying that there’s no such thing.
Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.
Heavy stuff right out of the blue. Poems such as Cat in an Empty Apartment or The Suicide’s Room show the void death leaves within the world. However, Syzmborska has one of the most optimistic poems about death I have ever read with On Death, Without Exaggeration. She illustrates death as weak and sloppy, saying death always does the job awkwardly and
can’t even get the things done
that are part of its trade:
dig a grave
make a coffin
clean up after itself
Syzmborska is one of the rare few who place the living on the winning side in a battle against death:
Whoever claims that it’s omnipotent
is himself living proof
that it’s not
There’s no life
that couldn’t be immortal
if only for a moment.
Death
always arrives by that very moment too late.
In vain it tugs at the knob
of the invisible door.
As far as you’ve come
can’t be undone.
Not all of her poetry is gloomy. Much of it deals with the human condition and Szymborska has a signature bemused flair that seeps into her poems about the human fate and place in the universe. She often writes of how the world is seemingly made up of chance, how we by chance became who we are (and that she would never want to be anyone else) and that each second of life is an escape from a chance death (which made me think of life as a game Russian Roulette – each time a near death experience slides by its as if we hear that ‘click’ of safety, but this can only go on so long before that ‘click’ will be the ‘bang!’). Several poems, including my personal favorite Life While-You-Wait give us a Shakespeare-like vision of each human as a actor upon a stage, except life is improvisational acting and there is no rehearsal and no second chance to get it right.
I know nothing of the role I play.
I only know it’ mine, I can’t exchange it.
I have to guess on the spot
just what this play’s all about.
…
If I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance,
or repeat a single Thursday that has passed!
But here comes Friday with a script I haven’t seen”
The link between the past, present and future is often tied tightly within her poems. In a very existential way, Szymborska describes us as being a product of our choices and pasts, a unique chance of actions that created us out of the infinite possible selves. From No Title Needed:
And yet I’m sitting by this river, that’s a fact
And since I’m here
I must have come from somewhere
and before that turned up in many other places,
exactly like the conquerors of nations
before setting sail.
From somber, introspective, morbid to outright funny, Szymborska’s collected poems deliver one treat after another. It could easily be picked up and read at random, but a straight through reading offers a bit more insight to the growth and maturation of the poet. If you are a fan of this often neglected art, do yourself a favor and read some Szymborska. If you are looking to get into poetry, this is a perfect starting point. Keep your pen or highlighter nearby while you read because she is very insightful and delivers gem after gem that you will want to revisit.
4/5
A few recommended poems:
Life While-You-Wait
On Death, Without Exaggeration
Over Wine
An Opinion on the Question of Pornography
I’m Working on the World
4a.m.
No Title Needed
A Contribution to Statistics
October 27, 2020
Stunning collection of poems.
Hard to pick a favourite as I have so many.
'Could Have' (below) is certainly one of them.
It could have happened.
It had to happen.
It happened earlier. Later.
Nearer. Further off.
It happened, but not to you.
You were saved because you were the first.
You were saved because you were the last.
Alone. With others.
On the right. The left.
Because it was raining. Because of the shade.
Because the day was sunny.
You were in luck—there was a forest.
You were in luck—there were no trees.
You were in luck— a rake, a hook, a beam, a brake,
a jamb, a turn, a quarter inch, an instant.
You were in luck—just then a straw went floating by.
As a result, because, although, despite.
What would have happened if a hand, a foot,
within an inch, a hairsbreadth from
an unfortunate coincidence.
So you're here? Still dizzy from another dodge, close shave,
reprieve?
One hole in the net and you slipped through?
I couldn't be more shocked or speechless.
Listen,
how your heart pounds inside me.
Read
May 10, 2021" They're both convinced
that a sudden passion joined them
Such certainty is beautiful ,
but uncertainty is more beautiful still.
Since they'd never met before, they're sure
that there'd been nothing between them.
But what's the word from the streets, staircases, hallways-
perhaps they've passed by each other a million times ?
I want to ask them
if they don't remember -
a moment face to face
in some revolving door ?
Perhaps a " sorry " muttered in a crowd ?
a curt " wrong number" caught in the receiver ?
but I know the answer.
No, they don't remember.
They'd be amazed to hear
that Chance has been toying with them
now for years.
Every beginning
is only a sequel, after all,
and the book of events
is always open halfway through. "
- Love at First Sight -
that a sudden passion joined them
Such certainty is beautiful ,
but uncertainty is more beautiful still.
Since they'd never met before, they're sure
that there'd been nothing between them.
But what's the word from the streets, staircases, hallways-
perhaps they've passed by each other a million times ?
I want to ask them
if they don't remember -
a moment face to face
in some revolving door ?
Perhaps a " sorry " muttered in a crowd ?
a curt " wrong number" caught in the receiver ?
but I know the answer.
No, they don't remember.
They'd be amazed to hear
that Chance has been toying with them
now for years.
Every beginning
is only a sequel, after all,
and the book of events
is always open halfway through. "
- Love at First Sight -
September 25, 2011
"Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous "I don't know."...That is why I value that little phrase "I don't know so highly. It's small, but it flies on mighty wings. It expands our lives to include spaces within us as well as the outer expanses in which our tiny Earth hangs suspended...Poets, if they're genuine, must always keep repeating "I don't know"(Szymborska, The Poet and the World).
This excerpt from Syzmborska's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech describes the mission in her poetry which she explores throughout her collection. Szymborska's book, "Poems New and Collected" rattles the mind's realm of reality, spirituality, and unknown humanity. A predominate pattern of poisioning passages of darkness lead to peepholes to positive. She delivers a inspiringly intelligent, thought inciting pile of poems. Szymborska is a poet who does not hide behind her writings. She expresses herself and thoughts and is not afraid to do so. This certain poem of hate could be a bit risky to write, but it actually tells the truth. Hate is everywhere, even on the sports fields, with the fans and athletes themselves.
Szymborska seems to have sat in the corner of endless crowded and uncrowded rooms and she shares with us the intricacy of over 70 years of situations. A must for those who love poetry, and a volume to make those love poetry that have never kissed its lips before.
This excerpt from Syzmborska's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech describes the mission in her poetry which she explores throughout her collection. Szymborska's book, "Poems New and Collected" rattles the mind's realm of reality, spirituality, and unknown humanity. A predominate pattern of poisioning passages of darkness lead to peepholes to positive. She delivers a inspiringly intelligent, thought inciting pile of poems. Szymborska is a poet who does not hide behind her writings. She expresses herself and thoughts and is not afraid to do so. This certain poem of hate could be a bit risky to write, but it actually tells the truth. Hate is everywhere, even on the sports fields, with the fans and athletes themselves.
Szymborska seems to have sat in the corner of endless crowded and uncrowded rooms and she shares with us the intricacy of over 70 years of situations. A must for those who love poetry, and a volume to make those love poetry that have never kissed its lips before.
September 24, 2019
Great Geworfenheit, this might be the most transportive collection ever, but how would we know? Certainly we encounter collections by other poets, but we've changed in the interim, haven't we? Our ability to objectify is awash in the flux. Our throwness keeps us ever on edge, estranged albeit sheltered. The moments of our life are formless unless we are there--peering over Arendt's bannister to afford them as time. Biological time has yet to be translated, some haggle over rights and tenure.
This is my second encounter with Szymborska and I trust her. She's glib yet (somehow) silent, she quips about utility and objects and detail fade into constructions, compounds. Past-tense rumors--or possibilities.
I highly recommend her work.
This is my second encounter with Szymborska and I trust her. She's glib yet (somehow) silent, she quips about utility and objects and detail fade into constructions, compounds. Past-tense rumors--or possibilities.
I highly recommend her work.
August 27, 2015
Ova žena je blago.
May 26, 2015
I think I may have a problem with the recently deceased Szymborska. Her poetry glitters, I have even watched her on Youtube speaking in Polish simply because her eyes also glitter with intelligience and humour. I knew they had to after stumbling across this volume in a used bookstore, opening it, and other than eating and sleeping, not putting it down until I had finished. Then I started all over again. Though a great number of these poems were written over half a century ago and in the drab oppressive atmosphere of a communist Poland they certainly rang true and loud for me. There is a mischeviousness to her which you don't find all that often in the house of verse. In addition the imagery and ideas are vital, fresh and individual but not hermetic. I have no idea what the original poems SOUND like, which is a challenge for any translator and sometimes for me a source of anxiety when I'm reading their work, but whatever I'm really reading here it is fantastic. What is with post war Poland? In Herbert, Milosz and Szymborska they produced three absolutely extraordinary poets. It's a small book, so you can take it with you for the bus rides or what have you. One of my favorite purchases of the last few years. She came out of nowhere (for me) and now sits pretty close to the top of poets I go to for solace and insight.
September 22, 2015
Still, time’s unbounded power
that makes a mountain crumble
moves seas, rotates a star,
won’t be enough to tear lovers apart:
they are too naked, too embraced,
too much like timid sparrows
----
I worked to sprout leaves.
I tried to take root.
I held my breath to speed things up,
and waited for the petals to enclose me
----
Nothing can ever happen twice.
In consequence,
the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised
and leave without the chance to practice
----
Memories come to mind like excavated statues
that have misplaced their heads.
----
I slip my arm from underneath his sleeping head—
it’s numb, swarming with imaginary pins.
A host of fallen angels perches on each tip,
waiting to be counted
----
Funny little thing.
How could she know that even despair can work for you if you’re lucky enough to outlive it.
----
If I want to (and you can’t be too sure that I will),
I’ll peer down the throat of your silence,
I’ll read your views
from the sockets of your eyes,
I’ll remind you in infinite detail
of what you expected from life besides death.
that makes a mountain crumble
moves seas, rotates a star,
won’t be enough to tear lovers apart:
they are too naked, too embraced,
too much like timid sparrows
----
I worked to sprout leaves.
I tried to take root.
I held my breath to speed things up,
and waited for the petals to enclose me
----
Nothing can ever happen twice.
In consequence,
the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised
and leave without the chance to practice
----
Memories come to mind like excavated statues
that have misplaced their heads.
----
I slip my arm from underneath his sleeping head—
it’s numb, swarming with imaginary pins.
A host of fallen angels perches on each tip,
waiting to be counted
----
Funny little thing.
How could she know that even despair can work for you if you’re lucky enough to outlive it.
----
If I want to (and you can’t be too sure that I will),
I’ll peer down the throat of your silence,
I’ll read your views
from the sockets of your eyes,
I’ll remind you in infinite detail
of what you expected from life besides death.
April 6, 2016
This was my first book of poetry. I felt intimidated going into it but I dove in anyway because I read her poem "Possibilities" somewhere else and I loved it. I'll be reading more poetry now thanks to Szymborska. I don't know much about poetry but I feel like this book was a success because I genuinely enjoyed and dog-eared 38 out of her 165 poems.
POSSIBILITIES
I prefer movies.
I prefer cats.
I prefer the oaks along the Warta.
I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.
I prefer myself liking people
to myself loving mankind.
I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.
I prefer the color green.
I prefer not to maintain
that reason is to blame for everything.
I prefer exceptions.
I prefer to leave early.
I prefer talking to doctors about something else.
I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems.
I prefer, where love's concerned, nonspecific anniversaries
that can be celebrated every day.
I prefer moralists
who promise me nothing.
I prefer cunning kindness to the overtrustful kind.
I prefer the earth in civvies.
I prefer conquered to conquering countries.
I prefer having some reservations.
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
I prefer the Grimms' fairy tales to the newspapers' front pages.
I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.
I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.
I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.
I prefer desk drawers.
I prefer many things that I haven't mentioned here
to many things I've also left unsaid.
I prefer zeros on the loose
to those lined up behind a cipher.
I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
I prefer to knock on wood.
I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being.
POSSIBILITIES
I prefer movies.
I prefer cats.
I prefer the oaks along the Warta.
I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.
I prefer myself liking people
to myself loving mankind.
I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.
I prefer the color green.
I prefer not to maintain
that reason is to blame for everything.
I prefer exceptions.
I prefer to leave early.
I prefer talking to doctors about something else.
I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems.
I prefer, where love's concerned, nonspecific anniversaries
that can be celebrated every day.
I prefer moralists
who promise me nothing.
I prefer cunning kindness to the overtrustful kind.
I prefer the earth in civvies.
I prefer conquered to conquering countries.
I prefer having some reservations.
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
I prefer the Grimms' fairy tales to the newspapers' front pages.
I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.
I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.
I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.
I prefer desk drawers.
I prefer many things that I haven't mentioned here
to many things I've also left unsaid.
I prefer zeros on the loose
to those lined up behind a cipher.
I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
I prefer to knock on wood.
I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being.
March 25, 2013
Szymborska is entertainingly whimsical without ever being twee. Many of the poems arrive at anti-sentimental reminders of mortality, in fact. But there's a lot to enjoy and think about on the way there. One of my favorites now. Also, not that I can understand the original Polish, but the translators seem to have done an excellent job.
September 29, 2014
I stumbled upon Wislawa Symborska a while ago and I am grateful. If I talk about a certain poet being the voice of America, or of nature, it is specific, limited and based on my unquestionably non expert opinion. But I think I am right here. This poet is a voice of humanity: brave, funny, serious, aware, in awe, and unable to put down. She knows how to be playful, and when and where to use it to make us smile, and then where to drop the guillotine of meaning and insight. She is not sappy, nor sentimental; she is intense, alert, genuine. She mixes wonder with practicality and dreams with reality, political, personal, natural, unnatural. “I understand/what love can’t,/ and forgive/as love never would…if I live in three dimensions,/in nonlyrical and nonrhetorical space/ with a genuine, shifting horizon.”(from thank-you note) I can randomly pick any poem and there is global concern, praise of individuality, hatred of the oppressor, love of truth and freedom. There is nothing she can’t make into a poem, no idea, no theory, no- thing. “You’re crying here, but there they’re dancing,/there they’re dancing in your tear. There they’re happy, making merry,/hydrogen, oxygen, those rascals./Chlorine, sodium, a pair of rogues…/your crying’s music to their ears. (from Motion) Science, pornography, torture, resumes, stage fright. It is all there, and more.
There are many families in which nobody writes poems,
But once it starts up it’s hard to quarantine.
Sometimes poetry cascades down through the generations… ( from IN PRAISE OF MY SISTER)
Astonishment
Why after all this one and not the rest?
Why this specific self, not in a nest,
But a house? Sewn up not in scales, but skin?
Not topped off by a leaf, but by a face?
Why on earth now, on Tuesday of all days,
And why on earth, pinned down by this star’s pin?
In spite of years of my not being here?
In spite of seas of all these dates and faces,
These cells, celestials, and coelenterates?
What is it really that made me appear
Neither an inch nor half a globe too far,
Neither a minute nor aeons too early?
What made me fill myself so squarely?
Birthday
So much world all at once- how it rustles and bustles!
Moraines and morays and morasses and mussels,
The flame, the flamingo, the flounder, the feather-
How to line them all up, how to put them together?
Isn’t sunset a little too much for two eyes
That, who knows, may not open to see the sun rise?
I am just passing through; it’s a five minute stop.
I won’t catch what is distant; what’s too close, I’ll mix up.
Psalm
Oh the leaky boundaries of man-made states!
How many clouds float past them with impunity;
How much desert sand shifts from one land to another;
How many mountain pebbles tumble onto foreign soil
In provocative hops!
Need I mention every single bird that flies in the face of frontiers
Or alights on the roadblocks at the border?
A humble robin- still, its tail resides abroad
While its beak stays home. It that weren’t enough, it won’t stop bobbing!
Oh, to register in detail, at a glance, the chaos
prevailing on every continent!
Isn’t that a privet on the far bank
smuggling its hundred-thousandth leaf across the river?
And who but the octopus, with impudent long arms,
Would disrupt the scared bounds of territorial waters?
And how can we talk of order overall
When the very placement of the stars
Leaves us doubting just what shines for whom?
Not to speak of the fog’s reprehensible drifting!
And dust blowing all over the steppes
As if they hadn’t been partitioned!
And the voices coasting on obliging airwaves,
That conspiratorial squeaking, those indecipherable mutters!
Only what is human can truly be foreign.
The rest is mixed vegetation, subversive moles, and wind.
UNDER ONE SMALL STAR
My apologies to chance to calling it necessity.
My apologies to necessity if I’m mistaken, after all.
Please, don’t be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due.
May my dead be patient with the way my memories fade.
My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second.
My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first.
Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.
Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.
I apologize for my record of minutes to those who cry from the depths.
I apologize to those who wait in railway stations for being asleep today at five a.m.
Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing from time to time.
Pardon me, deserts, that I don’t rush to you bearing a spoonful of water.
My apologies to great questions for small answers.
Truth, please don’t pay me much attention.
Dignity, please be magnanimous.
Soul, don’t take offense that I’ve only got you now and then.
My apologies to everything that I can’t be everywhere at once.
My apologies to everyone that I can’t be each woman and each man.
I know I won’t be justified as long as I live,
since I myself stand in my own way.
Don’t bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words,
Then labor heavily so that they may seem light.
There are many families in which nobody writes poems,
But once it starts up it’s hard to quarantine.
Sometimes poetry cascades down through the generations… ( from IN PRAISE OF MY SISTER)
Astonishment
Why after all this one and not the rest?
Why this specific self, not in a nest,
But a house? Sewn up not in scales, but skin?
Not topped off by a leaf, but by a face?
Why on earth now, on Tuesday of all days,
And why on earth, pinned down by this star’s pin?
In spite of years of my not being here?
In spite of seas of all these dates and faces,
These cells, celestials, and coelenterates?
What is it really that made me appear
Neither an inch nor half a globe too far,
Neither a minute nor aeons too early?
What made me fill myself so squarely?
Birthday
So much world all at once- how it rustles and bustles!
Moraines and morays and morasses and mussels,
The flame, the flamingo, the flounder, the feather-
How to line them all up, how to put them together?
Isn’t sunset a little too much for two eyes
That, who knows, may not open to see the sun rise?
I am just passing through; it’s a five minute stop.
I won’t catch what is distant; what’s too close, I’ll mix up.
Psalm
Oh the leaky boundaries of man-made states!
How many clouds float past them with impunity;
How much desert sand shifts from one land to another;
How many mountain pebbles tumble onto foreign soil
In provocative hops!
Need I mention every single bird that flies in the face of frontiers
Or alights on the roadblocks at the border?
A humble robin- still, its tail resides abroad
While its beak stays home. It that weren’t enough, it won’t stop bobbing!
Oh, to register in detail, at a glance, the chaos
prevailing on every continent!
Isn’t that a privet on the far bank
smuggling its hundred-thousandth leaf across the river?
And who but the octopus, with impudent long arms,
Would disrupt the scared bounds of territorial waters?
And how can we talk of order overall
When the very placement of the stars
Leaves us doubting just what shines for whom?
Not to speak of the fog’s reprehensible drifting!
And dust blowing all over the steppes
As if they hadn’t been partitioned!
And the voices coasting on obliging airwaves,
That conspiratorial squeaking, those indecipherable mutters!
Only what is human can truly be foreign.
The rest is mixed vegetation, subversive moles, and wind.
UNDER ONE SMALL STAR
My apologies to chance to calling it necessity.
My apologies to necessity if I’m mistaken, after all.
Please, don’t be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due.
May my dead be patient with the way my memories fade.
My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second.
My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first.
Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.
Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.
I apologize for my record of minutes to those who cry from the depths.
I apologize to those who wait in railway stations for being asleep today at five a.m.
Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing from time to time.
Pardon me, deserts, that I don’t rush to you bearing a spoonful of water.
My apologies to great questions for small answers.
Truth, please don’t pay me much attention.
Dignity, please be magnanimous.
Soul, don’t take offense that I’ve only got you now and then.
My apologies to everything that I can’t be everywhere at once.
My apologies to everyone that I can’t be each woman and each man.
I know I won’t be justified as long as I live,
since I myself stand in my own way.
Don’t bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words,
Then labor heavily so that they may seem light.
October 9, 2024
I liked the onion poem 🧅
January 3, 2019
This is the kind of poetry to keep by your bedside, and read over and over again.
September 17, 2023
You want to read poems, that has unexpected turn of phrase and clever metaphors? Look no further, here it is. Seriously, these collection of poems are witty, insightful and also deeply human. What stands out most is that, even with plain language, she has been able to convey complex things.
Here are a few examples of Szymborska's poetry ( my personal favourites):
On the meaning of existence:
"I'm not sure who's got the upper hand: the world or me. But I'm not giving up without a fight."
On death:
"Death is the ultimate democracy. In death, we are all equal. No matter how rich or poor, famous or unknown, we all end up in the same place."
Here are a few examples of Szymborska's poetry ( my personal favourites):
On the meaning of existence:
"I'm not sure who's got the upper hand: the world or me. But I'm not giving up without a fight."
On death:
"Death is the ultimate democracy. In death, we are all equal. No matter how rich or poor, famous or unknown, we all end up in the same place."
March 12, 2009
I don't know what to make of her. She's extremely clever, with an eye for little observations about the spaces between that might otherwise slide by. To be honest, though, I often find her cleverness to be cold, with an ironic distance that is off-putting. Even the language that she uses--her wordplay--is brilliant, but skewed somehow, Dr. Seuss-ish in a way, silly or banal or just too demotic. I often get the feeling that each poem had a sudden insight that would work better as a haiku and feels kind of belabored in the form that it appears. I dunno. In any case, she does have these moments of startling beauty that make it worthwhile.
August 5, 2021
My favorite poetry collection to-date. I can only recommend Wisława Szymborska's work; I would also recommend anyone who loves to write or create anything listen to or watch her Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
Eve from the rib, Venus from foam,
Minerva from Jupiter's head—
all three were more real than me.
When he isn't looking at me,
I try to catch my reflection
on the wall. And see the nail
where a picture used to be.
Eve from the rib, Venus from foam,
Minerva from Jupiter's head—
all three were more real than me.
When he isn't looking at me,
I try to catch my reflection
on the wall. And see the nail
where a picture used to be.
November 24, 2011
These works were translated marvelously. She manages to be ironic and witty, while remaining poignant and keeping human emotion in perspective. The word choice throughout is so achingly appropriate, as well. I love her work and highly recommend it.
August 28, 2021
Mesmerizing collection!
From: Travel Elegy
Everything’s mine but just on loan,
nothing for the memory to hold,
though mine as long as I look.
Memories come to mind like excavated statues
that have misplaced their heads.
From: Allegro Ma Non Tropo
I tug at life by its leaf hem:
will it stop for me, just once
momentarily forgetting
to what end it runs and runs?
From: Possibilities
I prefer zeros on the loose
to those lined up behind a cipher.
I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
I prefer to knock on wood.
I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being.
From: Nothing Twice
Nothing can ever happen twice.
In consequence, the sorry fact is
that we arrive here improvised
and leave without the chance to practice.
[…]
Why do we treat the fleeting day
with so much needless fear and sorrow?
It’s in its nature not to stay:
Today is always gone tomorrow.
From: Travel Elegy
Everything’s mine but just on loan,
nothing for the memory to hold,
though mine as long as I look.
Memories come to mind like excavated statues
that have misplaced their heads.
From: Allegro Ma Non Tropo
I tug at life by its leaf hem:
will it stop for me, just once
momentarily forgetting
to what end it runs and runs?
From: Possibilities
I prefer zeros on the loose
to those lined up behind a cipher.
I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
I prefer to knock on wood.
I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being.
From: Nothing Twice
Nothing can ever happen twice.
In consequence, the sorry fact is
that we arrive here improvised
and leave without the chance to practice.
[…]
Why do we treat the fleeting day
with so much needless fear and sorrow?
It’s in its nature not to stay:
Today is always gone tomorrow.
April 30, 2016
Over the course of two days and a couple hours, I wrote a really long, heartfelt review of this book. GR ate that review due to my own fault (I actually wrote it in the GR review window and left it open that entire time; I did try to copy it before I posted it in case such a thing happened, but I somehow managed to copy it using keyboard shortcuts on a keyboard I disconnected several minutes before this). So, instead of hearing how sublime she is, how she belongs in a rock concert stadium with the throngs cheering "SZYM-BOR-SKA! SZYM-BOR-SKA!", and how cute she is (see picture below), you get this lame ass explanation of incompetence. Szymborska might have found this utterly appropriate. Lesson learned--I'm not smart enough to use two keyboards, but then, most of the world is not lucky enough to have even one.
I highly recommend this book. It contains almost all of her work from 1957-1997, starting with what she considered her debut work, but was actually her third publication, Calling Out to Yeti. I almost always recommend Szymborska to people who claim not to like poetry--she's approachable, humorous, and deceptively deep.
The nice thing about reviewing poetry is that you can step aside and just let the poet speak for herself. Here's one of my favorites from this volume.
Portrait Of A Woman
Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh
She must be a variety.
Change so that nothing will change.
It's easy, impossible, tough going, worth a shot.
Her eyes are, as required, deep, blue, gray,
dark merry, full of pointless tears.
She sleeps with him as if she's first in line or the only one on earth.
She'll bear him four children, no children, one.
Naive, but gives the best advice.
Weak, but takes on anything.
A screw loose and tough as nails.
Curls up with Jasper or Ladies'Home Journal.
Can't figure out this bolt and builds a bridge.
Young, young as ever, still looking young.
Holds in her hand a baby sparrow with a broken wing,
her own money for some trip far away,
a meat cleaver, a compress, a glass of vodka.
Where's she running, isn't she exhausted.
Not a bit, a little, to death, it doesn't matter.
She must love him, or she's just plain stubborn.
For better, for worse, for heaven's sake.
See, I told you she was cute.
I highly recommend this book. It contains almost all of her work from 1957-1997, starting with what she considered her debut work, but was actually her third publication, Calling Out to Yeti. I almost always recommend Szymborska to people who claim not to like poetry--she's approachable, humorous, and deceptively deep.
The nice thing about reviewing poetry is that you can step aside and just let the poet speak for herself. Here's one of my favorites from this volume.
Portrait Of A Woman
Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh
She must be a variety.
Change so that nothing will change.
It's easy, impossible, tough going, worth a shot.
Her eyes are, as required, deep, blue, gray,
dark merry, full of pointless tears.
She sleeps with him as if she's first in line or the only one on earth.
She'll bear him four children, no children, one.
Naive, but gives the best advice.
Weak, but takes on anything.
A screw loose and tough as nails.
Curls up with Jasper or Ladies'Home Journal.
Can't figure out this bolt and builds a bridge.
Young, young as ever, still looking young.
Holds in her hand a baby sparrow with a broken wing,
her own money for some trip far away,
a meat cleaver, a compress, a glass of vodka.
Where's she running, isn't she exhausted.
Not a bit, a little, to death, it doesn't matter.
She must love him, or she's just plain stubborn.
For better, for worse, for heaven's sake.
See, I told you she was cute.
February 3, 2012
EDIT: Szymborska died on February 1, 2012, the day before I finished reading this book. I wrote most of the following review before I learned of her passing. May she rest in peace.
*****
When I was a bit younger, I spent a lot of time socializing with mathematicians. It turns out that mathematicians are a rather homogeneous group. If you ask a mathematician what type of music he likes best, he'll almost certainly reply "Classical music." If you ask him who his favorite musician is, you can bet your second-best boots that he'll answer "Bach." If you ask him who his favorite visual artist is, his response is almost sure to be "M.C. Escher."
Wislawa Szymborska's oeuvre, a series of dryly humorous jaunts in the borderlands of philosophy, is precisely the sort of poetry that a mathematician would embrace.
To be honest, I found the first three-quarters of this chronologically arranged collection rather unsatisfying: I prefer poetry that is emotionally risky, passionately charged, and devastatingly personal. Szymborska's sometime stance of aloof drollery and bloodless beneficence just left me wanting more. Perhaps something got lost in the translation?
The most effective poems in this book are those drawn from the recent collections The End and the Beginning (1993) and New Poems (1993-97). My favorites were "Parting With a View" (one of the rare poems here that breathes a raw intimacy), "One Version of Events" (a quiet visionary experience), and "A Contribution to Statistics" (the best use of mathematics I've ever seen in a poem).
*****
When I was a bit younger, I spent a lot of time socializing with mathematicians. It turns out that mathematicians are a rather homogeneous group. If you ask a mathematician what type of music he likes best, he'll almost certainly reply "Classical music." If you ask him who his favorite musician is, you can bet your second-best boots that he'll answer "Bach." If you ask him who his favorite visual artist is, his response is almost sure to be "M.C. Escher."
Wislawa Szymborska's oeuvre, a series of dryly humorous jaunts in the borderlands of philosophy, is precisely the sort of poetry that a mathematician would embrace.
To be honest, I found the first three-quarters of this chronologically arranged collection rather unsatisfying: I prefer poetry that is emotionally risky, passionately charged, and devastatingly personal. Szymborska's sometime stance of aloof drollery and bloodless beneficence just left me wanting more. Perhaps something got lost in the translation?
The most effective poems in this book are those drawn from the recent collections The End and the Beginning (1993) and New Poems (1993-97). My favorites were "Parting With a View" (one of the rare poems here that breathes a raw intimacy), "One Version of Events" (a quiet visionary experience), and "A Contribution to Statistics" (the best use of mathematics I've ever seen in a poem).
March 29, 2016
4.5
Autotomy
In danger, the holothurian cuts itself in two.
It abandons one self to a hungry world
and with the other self it flees.
It violently divides into doom and salvation,
retribution and reward, what has been and what will be.
An abyss appears in the middle of its body
between what instantly become two foreign shores.
Life on one shore, death on the other.
Here hope and there despair.
If there are scales, the pans don’t move.
If there is justice, this is it.
To die just as required, without excess.
To grow back just what’s needed from what’s left.
We, too, can divide ourselves, it’s true.
But only into flesh and a broken whisper.
Into flesh and poetry.
The throat on one side, laughter on the other,
quiet, quickly dying out.
Here the heavy heart, there non omnis moriar—
just three little words, like a flight’s three feathers.
The abyss doesn’t divide us.
The abyss surrounds us.
--Wislawa Szymborska (1932-2012)
Autotomy
In danger, the holothurian cuts itself in two.
It abandons one self to a hungry world
and with the other self it flees.
It violently divides into doom and salvation,
retribution and reward, what has been and what will be.
An abyss appears in the middle of its body
between what instantly become two foreign shores.
Life on one shore, death on the other.
Here hope and there despair.
If there are scales, the pans don’t move.
If there is justice, this is it.
To die just as required, without excess.
To grow back just what’s needed from what’s left.
We, too, can divide ourselves, it’s true.
But only into flesh and a broken whisper.
Into flesh and poetry.
The throat on one side, laughter on the other,
quiet, quickly dying out.
Here the heavy heart, there non omnis moriar—
just three little words, like a flight’s three feathers.
The abyss doesn’t divide us.
The abyss surrounds us.
--Wislawa Szymborska (1932-2012)
July 30, 2010
I'm really picky with poets. Reading this.... the lyricism I usually go for in poets seems to be absent. Some of the poems are really gorgeous - 'Over Wine', 'I Am Too Close', 'Report From the Hospital', 'Letters of the Dead', 'A Large Number', 'Sky', 'Parting With A View'.... The end of 'The Suicide's Room' - 'and he had so many friends, but all of us fit neatly / inside the empty envelope propped up against a cup' really got to me.
I also like that she writes so many very quotable things, the poem about Future/Silence/Nothing obv, and so many lines like, 'And what I do will become forever what I've done', 'they'll take Thursday over infinity any day', 'among the signs of bestiality / a clear conscience is Number One' etc but somehow, just not feeling her poetry that much, hence 4 stars not 5.
I also like that she writes so many very quotable things, the poem about Future/Silence/Nothing obv, and so many lines like, 'And what I do will become forever what I've done', 'they'll take Thursday over infinity any day', 'among the signs of bestiality / a clear conscience is Number One' etc but somehow, just not feeling her poetry that much, hence 4 stars not 5.
February 1, 2023
I read this far too quickly and probably didn't give it the time and love it deserved. Szymborska has long been a favourite of mine, my grandma introduced me to their poetry when I was still at school - I'm so greatful for her poetic influence.
My favourite Szymborska collection will always be 'View with a Grain of Sand' and the eponymous poem will always be my favourite. Szymborska writes about love, loss and everyday musing like nobody else - the poetry is genius. It is not over flowery, it is not self consciously pretentious, it is as poetry should be: honest and stark and beautiful.
I only gave this collection 4 stars because I think they could have chosen better poems, there are real treasures in here (True Love, Water, Parting with a View) - but I was not bawled over by all of them.
My favourite Szymborska collection will always be 'View with a Grain of Sand' and the eponymous poem will always be my favourite. Szymborska writes about love, loss and everyday musing like nobody else - the poetry is genius. It is not over flowery, it is not self consciously pretentious, it is as poetry should be: honest and stark and beautiful.
I only gave this collection 4 stars because I think they could have chosen better poems, there are real treasures in here (True Love, Water, Parting with a View) - but I was not bawled over by all of them.
February 1, 2018
Szymborska is one of the great European poets of the last century and the recipient of a Nobel Prize. Her poetry is incredibly accessible, written in a wry, prose style. Her humor is calculated and dry, and she thrives in comparison and paradox. The poems seem simple, but are deceptively complex.
This collection includes poems from previous collections as well as new poems. My favorites are the following.
Under One Small Star
A Large Number
In Praise of Feeling Bad About Yourself
This collection includes poems from previous collections as well as new poems. My favorites are the following.
Under One Small Star
My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.
My apologies to necessity if I’m mistaken, after all.
Please, don’t be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due.
May my dead be patient with my way my memories fade.
My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second.
My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first.
Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.
Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.
I apologize for my record of minuets to those who cry from the depths.
I apologize to those who wait in railway stations for being asleep today at five a.m.
Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing from time to time.
Pardon me, deserts, that I don’t rush toyou bearing a spoonful of water.
And you, falcon, unchanging year after year, always in the same cage,
your gaze always fixed on the same point in space,
forgive me, even if it turns out you were stuffed.
My apologies to the felled tree for the table’s four legs.
My apologies to great questions for small answers.
Truth, please don’t pay me much attention.
Dignity, please be magnanimous.
Bear with me, O mystery of existence, as I pluck the occasional thread from your train.
Soul, don’t take offense that I’ve only got you now and then.
My apologies to everything that I can’t be everywhere at once.
My apologies to everyone that I can’t be each woman and each man.
I know I won’t be justified as long as I live,
since I myself stand in my own way.
Don’t bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words,
then labor heavily so that they may seem light.
A Large Number
Four billion people on this earth,
but my imagination is still the same.
It’s bad with large numbers.
It’s still taken by particularity.
It flits in the dark like a flashlight,
illuminating only random faces
while all the rest go blindly by,
never coming to mind and never really missed.
But even a Dante couldn’t get it right.
Let alone someone who is not.
Even with all the muses behind me.
Non omnis moriar—a premature worry.
But am I entirely alive and is that enough.
It never was, and now less than ever.
My choices are rejections, since there is no other way,
but what I reject is more numerous,
denser, more demanding than before.
A little poem, a sigh, at the cost of indescribable losses.
I whisper my reply to my stentorian calling.
I can’t tell you how much I pass over in silence.
A mouse at the foot of the maternal mountain.
Life lasts as long as a few signs scratched by a claw in the sand.
My dreams—even they’re not as populous as they should be.
They hold more solitude than noisy crowds.
Sometimes a long-dead friend stops by awhile.
A single hand turns the knob.
An echo’s annexes overgrow the empty house.
I run from the doorstep into a valley
that is quiet, as if no one owned it, already an anachronism.
Why there’s still all this space inside me
I don’t know.
In Praise of Feeling Bad About Yourself
The buzzard never says it is to blame.
The panther wouldn’t know what scruples mean.
When the piranha strikes, it feels no shame.
If snakes had hands, they’d claim their hands were clean.
A jackal doesn’t understand remorse.
Lions and lice don’t waver in their course.
Why should they, when they know they’re right?
Though hearts of killer whales may weigh a ton,
in every other way they’re light.
On this third planet of the sun
among the signs of bestiality
a clear conscience is Number One.
Life While-You-WaitLife While-You-Wait.
Performance without rehearsal.
Body without alterations.
Head without premeditation.
I know nothing of the role I play.
I only know it’s mine, I can’t exchange it.
I have to guess on the spot
just what this play’s all about.
Ill-prepared for the privilege of living,
I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands.
I improvise, although I loathe improvisation.
I trip at every step over my own ignorance.
I can’t conceal my hayseed manners.
My instincts are for hammy histrionics.
Stage fright makes excuses for me, which humiliate me more.
Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel.
Words and impulses you can’t take back,
stars you’ll never get counted,
your character like a raincoat you button on the run—
the pitiful results of all this unexpectedness.
If I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance,
or repeat a single Thursday that has passed!
But here comes Friday with a script I haven’t seen.
Is it fair, I ask
(my voice a little hoarse,
since I couldn’t even clear my throat offstage).
You’d be wrong to think that it’s just a slapdash quiz
taken in makeshift accommodations. Oh no.
I’m standing on the set and I see how strong it is.
View with a Grain of SandWe call it a grain of sand,
but it calls itself neither grain nor sand.
It does just fine without a nae,
whether general, particular,
permanent, passing,
incorrect, or apt.
Our glance, our touch mean nothing to it.
It doesn’t feel itself seen and touched.
And that it fell on the windowsill
is only our experience, not its.
For it, it is no different from falling on anything else
with no assurance that it has finished falling
or that it is falling still.
The window has a wonderful view of a lake,
but the view doesn’t view itself.
It exists in this world
colorless, shapeless,
soundless, odoroless, and painless.
The lake’s floor exists floorlessly,
and its shore exists shorelessly.
Its water feels itself neither wet nor dry
and its waves to themselves are neither singular nor plural.
They splash deaf to their own noise
on pebbles neither large nor small.
And all this beneath a sky by nature skyless
in which the sun sets without setting at all
and hides without hiding behind an unminding cloud.
The wind ruffles it, its only reason being
that it blows.
A second passes.
A second second.
A third.
But they’re three seconds only for us.
Time has passed like a courier with urgent news.
But that’s just our simile.
The charater is invented, his haste is make-believe,
his news inhuman.
If you are a fan of prose poetry, you will love this volume.
See my other reviews here!
March 19, 2024
The poems improved the farther one got in this chronologically ordered collection. By the end I was inspired to read many of them aloud.
A sampling of my favourite vignettes:
So these are the Himalayas.
Mountains racing to the moon.
The moment of their start recorded
on the startling, ripped canvas of the sky.
Holes punched n a desert of clouds.
Thrust into nothing.
Echo—a white mute.
Quiet.
(from 'Notes from a Nonexistent Himalayan Expedition', 18)
Gnawing at stone, feeding rainbows.
In the sweat and the dew of pyramid and lilacs.
How light raindrop' contents are.
How gently the world touches me.
Whenever wherever whatever has happened
is written on waters of Babel.
(from 'Water', 58)
There's nothing more debauched than thinking.
This sort of wantonness runs wild like a wind-born weed
on a plot laid out for daisies.
(from 'An Opinion on the Question of Pornography', 208)
See how efficient it still is,
how it keeps itself in shape—
our century's hatred.
How easily it vaults the tallest obstacles.
How rapidly it pounces, trace us down.
(form 'Hatred', 230)
The real world doesn't take flight
the way dreams do.
No muffled voice, no doorbell
can dispel it,
no shriek, no crash
can cut it short.
(from 'The Real World', 234)
Something freshly birdish
starts rustling in the reeds.
I sincerely want them
to hear it.
(from 'Parting with a View', 241)
In happenstance's hands
space full and unfurls,
spreads and shrink.
The tablecloth
becomes a handkerchief.
(from 'Séance', 242)
Nothing's a gift, it's all on loan.
I'm drowning in debts up to my ears.
I'll have to pay for myself
with my self,
give up my life for my life.
(from 'Nothing's a gift', 252)
Each of us wished to have a homeland
free of neighbors
and to live his entire life
in the intervals between wars.
(from 'One Version of Events', 254)
A sampling of my favourite vignettes:
So these are the Himalayas.
Mountains racing to the moon.
The moment of their start recorded
on the startling, ripped canvas of the sky.
Holes punched n a desert of clouds.
Thrust into nothing.
Echo—a white mute.
Quiet.
(from 'Notes from a Nonexistent Himalayan Expedition', 18)
Gnawing at stone, feeding rainbows.
In the sweat and the dew of pyramid and lilacs.
How light raindrop' contents are.
How gently the world touches me.
Whenever wherever whatever has happened
is written on waters of Babel.
(from 'Water', 58)
There's nothing more debauched than thinking.
This sort of wantonness runs wild like a wind-born weed
on a plot laid out for daisies.
(from 'An Opinion on the Question of Pornography', 208)
See how efficient it still is,
how it keeps itself in shape—
our century's hatred.
How easily it vaults the tallest obstacles.
How rapidly it pounces, trace us down.
(form 'Hatred', 230)
The real world doesn't take flight
the way dreams do.
No muffled voice, no doorbell
can dispel it,
no shriek, no crash
can cut it short.
(from 'The Real World', 234)
Something freshly birdish
starts rustling in the reeds.
I sincerely want them
to hear it.
(from 'Parting with a View', 241)
In happenstance's hands
space full and unfurls,
spreads and shrink.
The tablecloth
becomes a handkerchief.
(from 'Séance', 242)
Nothing's a gift, it's all on loan.
I'm drowning in debts up to my ears.
I'll have to pay for myself
with my self,
give up my life for my life.
(from 'Nothing's a gift', 252)
Each of us wished to have a homeland
free of neighbors
and to live his entire life
in the intervals between wars.
(from 'One Version of Events', 254)
June 8, 2021
"You think at least the note must tell us something.
But what if I say there was no note--
and he had so many friends, but all of us fit neatly
inside the empty envelope propped up against a cup."
__from "The Suicide's Room"
a fragment
"I've shed my skin, squandered vertebrae and legs,
taken leave of my senses time and again.
I've long since closed my third eye to all that,
washed my fins of it and shrugged my branches.
Gone, lost, scattered to the four winds. It still surprises me
how little now remains, one first person sing., temporarily
declined in human form, just now making such a fuss
about a blue umbrella left yesterday on a bus."
__a fragment from
"A Speech At the Lost - And - Found"
"If I want to
(and you can't be too sure
that I will),
I'll peer down the throat of your silence,
I'll read your views
from the sockets of your eyes,
I''ll remind you in infinite detail
of what you expected from life besides death."
__from "Archeology"
a fragment
"See how efficient it still is,
how it keeps itself in shape---
our century's hatred.
How easily it vaults the tallest obstacles.
How rapidly it pounces, tracks us down."
__from "Hatred"
a fragment
"Talking with you is essential and impossible.
Urgent in this hurried life
and postponed to never."
__from "The Silence of Plants"
a fragment
My favorite Szymborska whole and entire were :
❤️ "Birthday" p129 and
"A Contribution to Statistics" p 263
and my very favorite line that made me smile :
"your character like a raincoat you button on the run"
__Wislawa Szymborska
But what if I say there was no note--
and he had so many friends, but all of us fit neatly
inside the empty envelope propped up against a cup."
__from "The Suicide's Room"
a fragment
"I've shed my skin, squandered vertebrae and legs,
taken leave of my senses time and again.
I've long since closed my third eye to all that,
washed my fins of it and shrugged my branches.
Gone, lost, scattered to the four winds. It still surprises me
how little now remains, one first person sing., temporarily
declined in human form, just now making such a fuss
about a blue umbrella left yesterday on a bus."
__a fragment from
"A Speech At the Lost - And - Found"
"If I want to
(and you can't be too sure
that I will),
I'll peer down the throat of your silence,
I'll read your views
from the sockets of your eyes,
I''ll remind you in infinite detail
of what you expected from life besides death."
__from "Archeology"
a fragment
"See how efficient it still is,
how it keeps itself in shape---
our century's hatred.
How easily it vaults the tallest obstacles.
How rapidly it pounces, tracks us down."
__from "Hatred"
a fragment
"Talking with you is essential and impossible.
Urgent in this hurried life
and postponed to never."
__from "The Silence of Plants"
a fragment
My favorite Szymborska whole and entire were :
❤️ "Birthday" p129 and
"A Contribution to Statistics" p 263
and my very favorite line that made me smile :
"your character like a raincoat you button on the run"
__Wislawa Szymborska
August 3, 2016
Also posted on Eva Lucias blog
Jeg var meget imponeret, da jeg læste denne digtsamling. Dette review vil fokusere yderligere på
digtet ’Still’, som omhandler jødernes deportation til KZ-lejrene i Anden Verdenskrig, som foregik fra 1939-1945, hvor omkring 6 millioner jøder blev udslettet i de forskellige KZ-lejre i Europa, bl.a. Auschwitz-Birkenau. Dette digt beskriver deportationen af jøderne, samt uvidenheden og kampen for menneskets eksistens.
Digtet ’Still’ er i sig selv en allegori, da det henviser til Anden Verdenskrig og jødernes udslettelse. Disse er aldrig direkte nævnt, men igennem symboler og metaforer er det muligt for læseren at danne sig sin egen fortolkning af digtet. Digtet fokuserer på rejsen mod noget, som endnu er ukendt og der gives aldrig svar eller afslutning på digtet. Hele digtet er en stemning af en venteposition, og her kan titlen bruges til videre fortolkning. Ordet ”still” defineres på dansk som ”ubevægelig” og noget som er stillestående. Dette referer til jødernes ståsted i livet og den manglende udvikling i digtet. Den manglende slutning kan også symbolisere en følelse af meningsløshed, som ville være relevant at forbinde med noget så grusomt som en krig med drab, vold og usselhed. Ironisk set, så er det ubevægelige en modsætning til de ellers bevægelige hjul på togvognene, men selvom togvognene kommer fremad, så er det stadig en rutinepræget handling med lyden af hjulene (”cor-rect, cor-rect”).
Der har været megen tvivl fra forskellige lyrikere og filosoffer, om hvorvidt der skulle skrives lyriske værker om krigen, da det for nogen virkede umoralsk at skildre disse grusomheder, som mennesket oplevede på tæt hånd. Theodor W. Adorno mener, at det var barbarisk at skrive digte om Auschwitz (Vordermark, Ulrike: ’Das Gedächtnis des Todes: die Erfahrung des Konzentrationslagers Buchenwald’, 2008). Han mener at noget der var så grusomt som Holocaust, ikke samtidig også kunne være poetisk. Det smukke element, som ellers ses ved læsningen af et digt virker ukorrekt i denne sammenhæng. Adorno citerer yderligere: ”Holocaust can only be represented with linguistic silence”, dvs: den bedste måde at kunne erfare ved denne oplevelse er ved hjælp af eftertanke og ikke at bruge lyrikken som psykologisk terapi, som mange forfatter gør brug af.
Jeg vil argumentere for, at en ærlig beretning som eksempelvist dette digt af Wislawa Szymborska er vigtigt i forhold til at gøre mennesket opmærksom på historien og at disse grusomheder reelt fandt sted. Det kan både være for at advare om ikke at begå den samme fejl igen, men også at ondskab desværre er en del af det eksistensielle i mennesket. Ydermere anses digtet stadig som smukt og poetisk, da det indebærer elementer, såsom troper, figurer og et beskrivende metaforisk udtryk.
Wislawa Szymborska blev født i 1923 i Prowent i Polen. Så vidt man ved, så var hun ikke selv jøde, men hendes familie valgte at blive i Polen under krigen. Fra 1943 fik hun arbejde på en togstation og undgik at blive deporteret til en arbejdslejr i Tyskland. Hun kunne derfor se de mange tog med forskellige eksistenser køre igennem stationen. Man kan forudindtage at flere af disse tog kørte mod KZ-lejrene i denne tid, eksempelvis Auschwitz-Birkenau, som ligger nær Polens hovedstad, Krakow. Selvom hun ikke var jøde, så blev hun som menneske stadig frarøvet sin frihed, som så mange andre, da hun så hvordan hendes hjemland blev undertrykt af tyskernes tilstedeværelse, og hvordan Polen dag for dag blev ødelagt af nazismen, og senere hen også Rusland og kommunismen.
Hun har skrevet flere digte, som omhandler krigstiden, bl.a. et digt om Hitler, hvor hun fokuserer på uvidenheden om hans fremtid: “Why, it’s little Adolf, the Hitler’s boy. Maybe he’ll grow up to be a doctor of law? Or will he be a tenor in the Vienna opera? … Not heard is the howling of dogs and the footsteps of fate” (Patterson, Archibald L: ‘Between Hitler and Stalin: The Quick Life and Secret Death of Edward Smigly’). Her henviser linjen “howling of dogs and the footsteps of fate” til de frygtelige år med Anden Verdenskrig. Typisk for Anden Verdenskrigs-forfattere, så beskriver hun tiden efter krigen og håbløsheden, som påvirker menneskets tanker om eksistensen.
Her kan man drage en parallel til Samuel Beckett, som også i sin skrivestil har den pessimistiske holdning til livet og menneskets eksistens. Hans værker, f.eks. ”Endgame” drager sit fokus på krigens grusomheder, den uendelige cirkel af livet og håbløsheden. Deres værker fokuserer på den manglende tro på menneskeheden efter en krig, hvor død og grusomhed cirkulerer rundt om menneskets mørke verden. Wislawa Szymborska har i et interview udtalt: “At the very beginning of my creative life I loved humanity. I wanted to do something good for mankind. Soon I understood that it isn’t possible to save mankind” (New York Times – Article: ’Wislawa Szymborska, Nobel-Winning Polish Poet, Dies at 88’), og disse linjer afspejler forfatterens tanker om afmagten i denne tid.
Digtet ’Still’ af Wislawa Szymborska handler om jødernes tilstand under Anden Verdenskrig, og hvad de udsættes for. Samtidig handler det også om de mennesker, som befinder sig udenfor lejrene, og som skal erkende hvad der foregår. Meningen med digtet sætter tanker i gang om Wislawa har forsøgt at stille spørgsmål ved menneskets rolle i forhold til den udslettede jødes rolle. Der kan reflekteres om hvorvidt mennesket, som står udenfor er passiv eller aktiv i forhold til udslettelsen. Er man som iagttager skyldig i de grusomme handlinger? Wislawa fokuserer på eksistentielle spørgsmål i menneskets liv og om medmenneskelig ansvar.
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Jeg var meget imponeret, da jeg læste denne digtsamling. Dette review vil fokusere yderligere på
digtet ’Still’, som omhandler jødernes deportation til KZ-lejrene i Anden Verdenskrig, som foregik fra 1939-1945, hvor omkring 6 millioner jøder blev udslettet i de forskellige KZ-lejre i Europa, bl.a. Auschwitz-Birkenau. Dette digt beskriver deportationen af jøderne, samt uvidenheden og kampen for menneskets eksistens.
Digtet ’Still’ er i sig selv en allegori, da det henviser til Anden Verdenskrig og jødernes udslettelse. Disse er aldrig direkte nævnt, men igennem symboler og metaforer er det muligt for læseren at danne sig sin egen fortolkning af digtet. Digtet fokuserer på rejsen mod noget, som endnu er ukendt og der gives aldrig svar eller afslutning på digtet. Hele digtet er en stemning af en venteposition, og her kan titlen bruges til videre fortolkning. Ordet ”still” defineres på dansk som ”ubevægelig” og noget som er stillestående. Dette referer til jødernes ståsted i livet og den manglende udvikling i digtet. Den manglende slutning kan også symbolisere en følelse af meningsløshed, som ville være relevant at forbinde med noget så grusomt som en krig med drab, vold og usselhed. Ironisk set, så er det ubevægelige en modsætning til de ellers bevægelige hjul på togvognene, men selvom togvognene kommer fremad, så er det stadig en rutinepræget handling med lyden af hjulene (”cor-rect, cor-rect”).
Der har været megen tvivl fra forskellige lyrikere og filosoffer, om hvorvidt der skulle skrives lyriske værker om krigen, da det for nogen virkede umoralsk at skildre disse grusomheder, som mennesket oplevede på tæt hånd. Theodor W. Adorno mener, at det var barbarisk at skrive digte om Auschwitz (Vordermark, Ulrike: ’Das Gedächtnis des Todes: die Erfahrung des Konzentrationslagers Buchenwald’, 2008). Han mener at noget der var så grusomt som Holocaust, ikke samtidig også kunne være poetisk. Det smukke element, som ellers ses ved læsningen af et digt virker ukorrekt i denne sammenhæng. Adorno citerer yderligere: ”Holocaust can only be represented with linguistic silence”, dvs: den bedste måde at kunne erfare ved denne oplevelse er ved hjælp af eftertanke og ikke at bruge lyrikken som psykologisk terapi, som mange forfatter gør brug af.
Jeg vil argumentere for, at en ærlig beretning som eksempelvist dette digt af Wislawa Szymborska er vigtigt i forhold til at gøre mennesket opmærksom på historien og at disse grusomheder reelt fandt sted. Det kan både være for at advare om ikke at begå den samme fejl igen, men også at ondskab desværre er en del af det eksistensielle i mennesket. Ydermere anses digtet stadig som smukt og poetisk, da det indebærer elementer, såsom troper, figurer og et beskrivende metaforisk udtryk.
Wislawa Szymborska blev født i 1923 i Prowent i Polen. Så vidt man ved, så var hun ikke selv jøde, men hendes familie valgte at blive i Polen under krigen. Fra 1943 fik hun arbejde på en togstation og undgik at blive deporteret til en arbejdslejr i Tyskland. Hun kunne derfor se de mange tog med forskellige eksistenser køre igennem stationen. Man kan forudindtage at flere af disse tog kørte mod KZ-lejrene i denne tid, eksempelvis Auschwitz-Birkenau, som ligger nær Polens hovedstad, Krakow. Selvom hun ikke var jøde, så blev hun som menneske stadig frarøvet sin frihed, som så mange andre, da hun så hvordan hendes hjemland blev undertrykt af tyskernes tilstedeværelse, og hvordan Polen dag for dag blev ødelagt af nazismen, og senere hen også Rusland og kommunismen.
Hun har skrevet flere digte, som omhandler krigstiden, bl.a. et digt om Hitler, hvor hun fokuserer på uvidenheden om hans fremtid: “Why, it’s little Adolf, the Hitler’s boy. Maybe he’ll grow up to be a doctor of law? Or will he be a tenor in the Vienna opera? … Not heard is the howling of dogs and the footsteps of fate” (Patterson, Archibald L: ‘Between Hitler and Stalin: The Quick Life and Secret Death of Edward Smigly’). Her henviser linjen “howling of dogs and the footsteps of fate” til de frygtelige år med Anden Verdenskrig. Typisk for Anden Verdenskrigs-forfattere, så beskriver hun tiden efter krigen og håbløsheden, som påvirker menneskets tanker om eksistensen.
Her kan man drage en parallel til Samuel Beckett, som også i sin skrivestil har den pessimistiske holdning til livet og menneskets eksistens. Hans værker, f.eks. ”Endgame” drager sit fokus på krigens grusomheder, den uendelige cirkel af livet og håbløsheden. Deres værker fokuserer på den manglende tro på menneskeheden efter en krig, hvor død og grusomhed cirkulerer rundt om menneskets mørke verden. Wislawa Szymborska har i et interview udtalt: “At the very beginning of my creative life I loved humanity. I wanted to do something good for mankind. Soon I understood that it isn’t possible to save mankind” (New York Times – Article: ’Wislawa Szymborska, Nobel-Winning Polish Poet, Dies at 88’), og disse linjer afspejler forfatterens tanker om afmagten i denne tid.
Digtet ’Still’ af Wislawa Szymborska handler om jødernes tilstand under Anden Verdenskrig, og hvad de udsættes for. Samtidig handler det også om de mennesker, som befinder sig udenfor lejrene, og som skal erkende hvad der foregår. Meningen med digtet sætter tanker i gang om Wislawa har forsøgt at stille spørgsmål ved menneskets rolle i forhold til den udslettede jødes rolle. Der kan reflekteres om hvorvidt mennesket, som står udenfor er passiv eller aktiv i forhold til udslettelsen. Er man som iagttager skyldig i de grusomme handlinger? Wislawa fokuserer på eksistentielle spørgsmål i menneskets liv og om medmenneskelig ansvar.
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January 29, 2019
Wisława Szymborska writes poems that are beautiful meditations, rambling, meandering, twisting, always finding fresh air, and always—-bang!—-piercing your heart.
July 5, 2014
Somehow I had never really read Szymborska. I'm not sure how that is possible, but there you have it - there are always more writers to be read and "discovered," not discovered by the world in general, because Wislawa Szymborska is a Nobel Laureate, after all, so the world knows about her, but rather there are always more books and writers to be discovered by each one of us.
This collection spans her career, and while some of the books collected move me more than others, this collection gets five stars simply because it is such a well-crafted work of poetry. Szymborska is intellectual in much of her approach to poems, asking and engaging the profound and difficult, but also while conjuring the emotional. This is poetry that celebrates both the rational and irrational.
Some favorite fragments:
From "Miracle Fair"
A miracle, just take a look around:
the inescapable earth.
An extra miracle, extra and ordinary:
the unthinkable
can be thought. (217)
From "Parting with a View," which after listing all the things she doesn't the world continuing onward with, especially in this place of the "view," the poem states:
There's one thing I won't agree to:
my own return.
The privilege of presence -
I give it up.
I survived you by enough,
and only by enough,
to contemplate from afar." (241)
From "Love at First Sight"
Every beginning
is only a sequel, after all,
and the book of events
is always open halfway through. (245)
From "Possibilities"
"I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being" (215)
From "No Title Required"
"So it happens that I am and look.
Above me a whole butterfly is fluttering through the air
on wings that are its alone,
and a shadow skims through my hands
that is none other than itself, no one else's but its own.
When I see such things, I'm no longer sure
that what's important
is more important than what's not." (226)
And, finally, from "Some People," in the context of running from violence and terror:
"Some invisibility would come in handy,
some grayish stoniness,
or, better yet, some nonexistence
for a shorter or a longer while." (262)
This is book that seeks to speak to something deeper in us all, and I'm so glad I read it. And, as a side note, I read this book because I realized that I had far more men than women in my to-be-read stack, and so I popped by the bookstore to get a few women, to keep my balance of 50/50 gender distribution this year. So another perk of me reading more women this year is Szymborska.
This collection spans her career, and while some of the books collected move me more than others, this collection gets five stars simply because it is such a well-crafted work of poetry. Szymborska is intellectual in much of her approach to poems, asking and engaging the profound and difficult, but also while conjuring the emotional. This is poetry that celebrates both the rational and irrational.
Some favorite fragments:
From "Miracle Fair"
A miracle, just take a look around:
the inescapable earth.
An extra miracle, extra and ordinary:
the unthinkable
can be thought. (217)
From "Parting with a View," which after listing all the things she doesn't the world continuing onward with, especially in this place of the "view," the poem states:
There's one thing I won't agree to:
my own return.
The privilege of presence -
I give it up.
I survived you by enough,
and only by enough,
to contemplate from afar." (241)
From "Love at First Sight"
Every beginning
is only a sequel, after all,
and the book of events
is always open halfway through. (245)
From "Possibilities"
"I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being" (215)
From "No Title Required"
"So it happens that I am and look.
Above me a whole butterfly is fluttering through the air
on wings that are its alone,
and a shadow skims through my hands
that is none other than itself, no one else's but its own.
When I see such things, I'm no longer sure
that what's important
is more important than what's not." (226)
And, finally, from "Some People," in the context of running from violence and terror:
"Some invisibility would come in handy,
some grayish stoniness,
or, better yet, some nonexistence
for a shorter or a longer while." (262)
This is book that seeks to speak to something deeper in us all, and I'm so glad I read it. And, as a side note, I read this book because I realized that I had far more men than women in my to-be-read stack, and so I popped by the bookstore to get a few women, to keep my balance of 50/50 gender distribution this year. So another perk of me reading more women this year is Szymborska.
October 3, 2015
One of the best features of this collection of poems is the placing of Szymborska's Nobel Lecture, "The Poet and the World" (1996), at the beginning. It provides a context from which one can understand why & how the poet has written as she has. "Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous 'I don't know.'...any knowledge that doesn't lead to new questions quickly dies out...This is why I value that little phrase 'I don't know' so highly...Poets, if they're genuine, must also keep repeating, 'I don't know.' Each poem marks an effort to answer this statement, but as soon as the final period hits the page, the poet begins to hesitate, starts to realize that this particular answer was pure makeshift, absolutely inadequate. So poets keep on trying...Granted, in daily speech, where we don't stop to consider every word, we all use phrases such as 'the ordinary world,' 'ordinary life,' 'the ordinary course of events.' But in the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence, not anyone's existence in this world..."
Wislawa Szymborska is anything but an 'ordinary' poet. She reflects in her writing a serious wisdom about Being. She's an amazingly creative master of contrasting all sorts of things: objects, elements of nature, people. Her poetry is gritty, yet at the same time tender; whimsical, yet dead serious.
I especially applaud the translators of this work (without my knowing a word of Polish!), Stanislaw Baranzak & Clare Cavanagh. How they managed to express such nuanced poetry, one can only imagine. But the finished product "sells", it speaks to one's humanity & heart quite authentically.
Wislawa Szymborska is anything but an 'ordinary' poet. She reflects in her writing a serious wisdom about Being. She's an amazingly creative master of contrasting all sorts of things: objects, elements of nature, people. Her poetry is gritty, yet at the same time tender; whimsical, yet dead serious.
I especially applaud the translators of this work (without my knowing a word of Polish!), Stanislaw Baranzak & Clare Cavanagh. How they managed to express such nuanced poetry, one can only imagine. But the finished product "sells", it speaks to one's humanity & heart quite authentically.
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