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A review by versmonesprit
Poems New and Collected by Wisława Szymborska
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
3.0
This is my first time reading Szymborska, and I’d like to point out my disappointment that this collection does not include her first 2 books. This is a shame, because I found her earlier works miles better!
Szymborska has a beautiful talent for writing cosy, warm, loving, compassionate, emotional poems about nature and animals. I think that’s where she shines the best. Her poems feel like a secure embrace, calming for the soul.
Her later works include more humorous pieces, and much darker ones too. For me, these did not excel as much. This may very well be due to the fact that these are translated, and poetry (more than any other writing) loses almost all its soul in translation. One thing that makes me doubt the credibility of the translation is that at times there are far too many rhymes to be considered coincidental. I don’t speak Polish, but I don’t think it shares as many words with English as does, say, French, which could explain these rhymes. It’s a shame I can’t read any of these as Szymborska intended, as she wrote them, but it’d be a bigger shame if changes were made to her works just for them to rhyme in English.
Szymborska is inventive in her way of looking at the world, and some of her poems strike so hard despite their delicate apparence. One of her poems, Seen from Above, made me cry, and I can’t get it out of my head. She had so much compassion, so much love for the beautiful life we’re blessed to live in. May she rest in peace.
Szymborska has a beautiful talent for writing cosy, warm, loving, compassionate, emotional poems about nature and animals. I think that’s where she shines the best. Her poems feel like a secure embrace, calming for the soul.
Her later works include more humorous pieces, and much darker ones too. For me, these did not excel as much. This may very well be due to the fact that these are translated, and poetry (more than any other writing) loses almost all its soul in translation. One thing that makes me doubt the credibility of the translation is that at times there are far too many rhymes to be considered coincidental. I don’t speak Polish, but I don’t think it shares as many words with English as does, say, French, which could explain these rhymes. It’s a shame I can’t read any of these as Szymborska intended, as she wrote them, but it’d be a bigger shame if changes were made to her works just for them to rhyme in English.
Szymborska is inventive in her way of looking at the world, and some of her poems strike so hard despite their delicate apparence. One of her poems, Seen from Above, made me cry, and I can’t get it out of my head. She had so much compassion, so much love for the beautiful life we’re blessed to live in. May she rest in peace.