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A review by richardleis
View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems by Wisława Szymborska
5.0
The words in these poems are not Nobel Prize-winning because they are difficult and opaque, or because they are in fact quite accessible. The easiness of the imagery and the allusions, the grounding of the abstractions, the humor and the relatedness are also not necessary for winning Nobel Prizes. Poetry is not important because it is either difficult or easy, one approach to craft or another. Poetry is important because the poet reveals the world or a tiny piece of it, a moment or the sweep of cosmological time, and something maybe even they did not know was there before.
In the worlds of Wisława Szymborska a couple can be present at a train station because of their absence from it ("The Railroad Station.") Humanity can be a lab experiment ("Maybe All This") or entertaining "Slapstick" for angels to laugh at so hard they cry. A resumé ("Writing a Resume") and porn ("An Opinion on the Question of Pornography") are the repository of all of human history and human thought, and Death is terrible at its job ("On Death, Without Exaggeration.") Some of us should be able to remember "May 16, 1973" but we don't remember a single thing about it, not even "one whole second."
This collection of English translations of Szymborska's poems she wrote and published over several decades reminds me that human experience can be universal, even when the poet's eye describes the glint of the moment in a slightly different way than I have imagined. It does not matter that these poems are particularly clear in their meanings and deep with possible meanings, because even if they were difficult poems to parse, Szymborska's voice would let me see the world around me in a brand new light. That is her strength as a poet. I love her poems so much.
In the worlds of Wisława Szymborska a couple can be present at a train station because of their absence from it ("The Railroad Station.") Humanity can be a lab experiment ("Maybe All This") or entertaining "Slapstick" for angels to laugh at so hard they cry. A resumé ("Writing a Resume") and porn ("An Opinion on the Question of Pornography") are the repository of all of human history and human thought, and Death is terrible at its job ("On Death, Without Exaggeration.") Some of us should be able to remember "May 16, 1973" but we don't remember a single thing about it, not even "one whole second."
This collection of English translations of Szymborska's poems she wrote and published over several decades reminds me that human experience can be universal, even when the poet's eye describes the glint of the moment in a slightly different way than I have imagined. It does not matter that these poems are particularly clear in their meanings and deep with possible meanings, because even if they were difficult poems to parse, Szymborska's voice would let me see the world around me in a brand new light. That is her strength as a poet. I love her poems so much.