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Reviews
View With a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems by Stanisław Barańczak, Wisława Szymborska, Clare Cavanagh
mxunsmiley's review against another edition
4.0
Szymborska offers insight on ubiquitous subjects and themes to reflect on. She also has some fun, pleasing sounding poems which play on language. There were a few which missed their mark for me but it was mostly very enjoyable and worthy of the hype.
zoefruitcake's review against another edition
2.0
I read this as part of the 2017 Read Harder challenge. I would say the vast majority of them were wasted on me, they just weren't poems that spoke to me. I liked few enough to mark the pages, the best I felt were Rubens' Women, Coloratura and Birthday but I do think a special mention should be made of Hitler's first photograph
kazimir's review against another edition
3.0
The Onion
The onion, now that's something else.
Its innards don't exist.
Nothing but pure onionhood
fills this devout onionist.
Oniony on the inside,
onionesque it appears.
It follows its own daimonion
without our human tears.
Our skin is just a coverup
for the land where none dare go,
an internal inferno,
the anathema of anatomy.
In an onion there's only onion
from its top to its toe,
onionymous monomania,
unanimous omninudity.
At peace, of a piece,
internally at rest.
Inside it, there's a smaller one
of undiminished worth.
The second holds a third one,
the third contains a fourth.
A centripetal fugue.
Polyphony compressed.
Nature's rotundest tummy,
its greatest success story,
the onion drapes itself in its
own aureoles of glory.
We hold veins, nerves, and fat,
secretions' secret sections.
Not for us such idiotic
onionoid perfections.
The onion, now that's something else.
Its innards don't exist.
Nothing but pure onionhood
fills this devout onionist.
Oniony on the inside,
onionesque it appears.
It follows its own daimonion
without our human tears.
Our skin is just a coverup
for the land where none dare go,
an internal inferno,
the anathema of anatomy.
In an onion there's only onion
from its top to its toe,
onionymous monomania,
unanimous omninudity.
At peace, of a piece,
internally at rest.
Inside it, there's a smaller one
of undiminished worth.
The second holds a third one,
the third contains a fourth.
A centripetal fugue.
Polyphony compressed.
Nature's rotundest tummy,
its greatest success story,
the onion drapes itself in its
own aureoles of glory.
We hold veins, nerves, and fat,
secretions' secret sections.
Not for us such idiotic
onionoid perfections.
cggs's review against another edition
dark
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced