Review
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New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
"Both plain-spoken and luminous . . . Szymborska's skepticism,
her merry, mischievious irreverence and her thirst for the
surprise of fresh perception make her the enemy of all tyrannical
certainties. Hers is the best of the Western mind--free,
restless, questioning." -- New York Times Book Review
"Vast, , and charged with the warmth of a life fully
imagined to the end, there's no better place for those unfamiliar
with her work to begin." -- Megan O'Grady, Vogue
"Listening to Clare Cavanagh speak of translation as an art is a
reminder that translators must be as adept as poets at working
with words . . . is not only impressive because of
Szymborska's precise, , and observationally funny poems .
. . but because of Cavanagh and Baranczak's tireless dedication
in bringing them to English without sacrificing their forms." --
Jacob Victorine, Publishers Weekly profile
"Nobel laureate Szymborska's gorgeous posthumous collection,
translated and edited by her confidant, Cavanagh, with Baranczak,
includes more than 250 poems, selected from 13 books, dating back
to 1952, as well as previously unreleased poems from as far back
as 1944. This revered Polish poet, who came to fame well after
the poet Charles Simic first handed her work to an editor,
interweaves ins into the suffering experienced during World
War II and the Cold War brutalities of Stalin with catchy,
realistic, colloquial musings on obvious and overlooked aspects
of survival. Her poems are revelatory yet rooted in the everyday.
She writes about living with horrors, and about ordinary lives:
people in love, at work, enjoying a meal. Throughout, Szymborska
considers loss and fragility, as when former lovers walk past
each other and an aging professor is no longer allowed his vodka
and s. She writes, too, of the imprecision of memory,
and, in the title poem, the discovery that s 'give no access
to the vicious truth.' This is a brilliant and important
collection." -- Mark Eleveld, Booklist, starred review
"Szymborska (1923-2012), winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in
Literature, has her vast and impressive poetic repertoire on full
display in this posthumously published volume. Ordered
chronologically, the book reveals her development over seven
decades, including a gradual departure from end rhyme and the
sharpening of her wit. As multitudinous as Whitman, she conveyed
deep feeling through vivid, surreal imagery and could revive
clichéd language by reconnecting it to the body in startling
ways: 'Listen, / how your heart pounds inside me.' To say that
Szymborska wore many hats as a poet is an understatement: odes,
critiques, and persona poems are just a few of the forms her
writing took. Yet, despite their diversity, the constants of her
poems were nuance and observational humor: 'Four billion people
on this earth, / but my imagination is still the same.' Also
apparent is Szymborska's rare ability to present an epiphany in a
single line, and her bravery in writing toward death: 'But time
is short. I write.' Ever the student, she obsessively explored
the histories and processes of writing, never far from penning
another Ars Poetica. 'Everything here is small, near, accessible,
' Szymborska writes in the title poem--a maxim about the way the
reader feels within her lines." -- Publishers Weekly, starred and
boxed review
From the Inside Flap
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A new collected volume from the Nobel Prize winning poet that
includes, for the first time in English, all of the poems from
her last Polish collection
One of Europe s greatest poets, Nobel Prize winner Wislawa
Szymborska was also its wisest, wittiest, and most accessible.
With unexpected humor, her elegant, precise poems pose questions
we never thought to ask. If you want the world in a nutshell, a
Polish critic has remarked, try Szymborska. But the world held in
these lapidary poems is larger than the one we thought we knew.
Carefully edited by her longtime, award-winning translator,
Clare Cavanagh, the poems intrace Szymborska s work until her
death in 2012. Of the approximately two hundred fifty poems
included here, nearly forty are newly translated; thirteen
represent the entirety of the poet s last Polish collection,
Enough, never before published in English.
is the first English publication of Szymborska s work since
the accledHere, and it offers her devoted readers a welcome
return to her ironic elegance (The New Yorker)."
From the Back Cover
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Praise for Wislawa Szymborksa:
Extremely smart, witty, and level-headed, [Szymborska] seduces
us with her wide range of interests, her atypical lack of
narcissism for a poet, and her cheerful pessimism. New York
Review of Books
Her poems offer a restorative wit as playful as it is steely and
as humble as it is wise. Most poets jostle for center stage, but
Szymborska looks on from afar, her wry acceptance of life s folly
remaining her strongest weapon against tyranny and bad taste. Los
Angeles Times Book Review
Refreshingly direct but always surprising, her poems keep taking
us to further, unexpected perspectives. O, the Oprah Magazine
Dark, complex, and profoundly intelligent. Washington Post
[She] captures the nightmarish contingency of human survival,
and the human callousness toward nature, with an ironic elegance
miraculously free of bitterness. The New Yorker"
About the Author
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WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA (1923-2012) was born in Poland and worked
as a poetry editor, translator, and columnist. She was awarded
the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996. CLARE CAVANAGH received an
NBCC award for criticism and a PEN Translation Award for her
work, with STANISLAW BARANCZAK, on Szymborska's poetry.