Biography EssayThe fourth Polish author honored with the Nobel Prize in literature—after Henryk Sienkiewicz in 1905, Wladyslaw Reymont in 1924, and Czeslaw Milosz in 1980—Wislawa Szymborsk...
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The fourth Polish author honored with the Nobel Prize in literature (1996) after Henryk Sienkiewicz in 1905, Wladyslaw Reymont in 1924, and Czeslaw Milosz in 1980-Wislawa Szymborska is also the sec...
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In the following review, Anders compliments Szymborska's attention to the often overlooked aspects of life in Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts: Seventy Poems, commenting that Szymborska's emph...
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In the following review, Carls examines the French translations of Szymborska's poetry presented in De la mort sans exagérer.
Before discussing yet another translation of the 1996 Nobel ...
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In the following excerpt, Carpenter evaluates the underlying themes in Szymborska's poetry and studies the subtle differences between translations of her poems.
When the Polish poet Wislawa Szy...
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In the following review, Worozbyt notes the subtle differences between the English translations of View with a Grain of Sand and Selected Poems, arguing that each translation provides valuable insight...
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In the following essay, Cavanagh analyzes the political and often apolitical themes in Szymborska's writing, exploring Szymborska's ironic portrayal of modern humanity's feelings ...
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In the following essay, Blazina offers a critical reading of Szymborska's poem “Brueghel's Two Monkeys,” emphasizing how the poet uses the image of the two monkeys to symbo...
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In the following review, the critic applauds the content and arrangement of Szymborska's poems in Miracle Fair: Selected Poems.
In this collection [Miracle Fair: Selected Poems], the Nobel Priz...
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In the following review, Rosenthal discusses how Szymborska's poem “Plotting with the Dead” illustrates the poet's insistence that all individuals have bonds with, guilt fo...
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In the following review, Ives offers a positive assessment of Nonrequired Reading: Prose Pieces, arguing that the essays showcase Szymborska's wit, social concerns, and mastery of language.
Unk...
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In the following essay, Karasek examines how Szymborska is able to portray “the totality of art” within her poetry and argues that “each of [Szymborska's poems is an autono...
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In the following essay, Baranczak praises Szymborska's skillful use of language throughout her works of poetry, exploring both her popularity in Poland and the questioning nature of her verse.
...
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In the following review, Vendler analyzes the recurring thematic elements in View with a Grain of Sand and discusses the irony, simplicity, and universality of Szymborska's poems.
“Again...
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Milosz is a Polish Nobel Prize-winning poet and essayist. In the following essay, Milosz analyzes the dominant thematic motifs in Polish poetry, commenting on Szymborska's place within the Poli...
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In the following transcript of Szymborska's Nobel Lecture, originally delivered on December 7, 1996, the author claims that poetic inspiration surrounds everyone and is captured in the quest to...
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In the following essay, Carpenter highlights the realist and nonemotional elements in Szymborska's poetry, noting the importance that Szymborska places in common, everyday events and experience...
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In the following interview, Szymborska discusses her personal history, her writing career, translations of her works, and authors she admires.
“I'm drowning in papers,” exclaims W...
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In the following essay, Bojanowska studies Szymborska's interpretation of mankind's importance and placement in nature, drawing particular emphasis to Szymborska's focus on man&#x...
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In the following excerpt, Kryński and Maguire acknowledge Szymborska's popularity in Poland and her significance to world literature despite being relatively unknown outside her homeland...
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In the following essay, Gajer offers a concise overview of Szymborska's poetic career, culminating in her 1996 Nobel Prize.
On October 30 1996, 73-year-old Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska won th...
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In the following review of View with a Grain of Sand, Gömöri generally approves of Stanisław Barańczak's and Clare Cavanagh's English translations of Szymbors...
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In the following essay, Hirsh encapsulates Szymborska's poetic work, considering its irony, skepticism, subjectivity, clarity, and wit.
The Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska, who won the 1996 Nobe...
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In the following essay, Osherow takes delight in Szymborska's poetic imagination and view of the commonplace.
Let me begin by making a peculiar confession: I love reading poetry in translation....
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In the following review of Szymborska's Poems New and Collected, 1957-1997, the critic praises the work's expert translation and comprehensiveness.
“Whatever else we might think o...
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In the following review of Poems New and Collected, 1957-1997, Christian finds Szymborska's collected works in English an “essential” volume.
“I'm working on the wor...
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In the following review of Poems New and Collected, 1957-1997, Anders highlights the extraordinary depth and diversity found in Szymborska's complete oeuvre of roughly 200 poems.
Wislawa Szymbo...
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In the following excerpted review of Poems New and Collected, 1957-1997, Greenlaw mentions the dark humor, simplicity surrounded in artifice, and tantalizing wisdom of Szymborska's poetry.
Wisl...
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In the following essay, Tapscott and Przybytek analyze Szymborska's Koniec i poczatek, focusing on the poetic collection's thematic structure and tensions between history and memory, lim...
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In the following essay, Blazina explicates Szymborska's poem “Bruegel's Two Monkeys,” considering the work's imagery, irony, use of language, and theme of “an...
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In the following essay, Freedman interprets the title poem of Szymborska's collection Wielka liczba—translated as “A Great Number”—as a work representative of the po...
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In the following review of Miracle Fair, Franklin remarks on the humor of Szymborska's poetry and mentions a number of her poems that appear in English for the first time in this collection.
It...
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In the following essay, Rosslyn describes Szymborska's apparent indifference to feminism, her fundamental skepticism, her rejection of cliché, and her discovery of the miraculous in the ...
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In the following review of View with a Grain of Sand, Vendler observes Szymborska's capacity to universalize as she details life's perplexing balance of joy and suffering.
“Again,...
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In the following essay, Romano collects responses to Szymborska's 1996 Nobel Prize for Literature and touches on her principal poetic themes.
Wislawa Szymborska, a 73-year-old Polish poet whose...
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In the following interview, Murphy questions Szymborska about how and why she writes poetry.
Three weeks ago, poet Wislawa Szymborska left her modest two-room apartment in the southern Polish city of ...
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In the following review of View with a Grain of Sand, Glover notes Szymborska's relative obscurity in the English-speaking world prior to her 1996 Nobel award.
There were two kinds of response ...
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In the following essay, Milosz emphasizes the tragicomic quality of Szymborska's private but unconfessional verse and calls her “first of all a poet of consciousness.”
I have been...
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In the following speech of acceptance for the 1996 Nobel Prize for Literature, Szymborska contemplates the centrality of the thought “I don't know” to poets and other individuals ...
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[In the following review, Carls detects "a grim reminder of taboos that are still bridling Polish society" in Poezji = Poems.]
Polish publishers have a tradition of publishing original w...
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[In the following review, Carpenter finds People on a Bridge "subtle, witty, and ironic."]
Long recognized in Poland as a leading voice in contemporary Polish poetry, Wislawa Szymborska ...
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[In the review below, Levine briefly compares People on a Bridge to the earlier Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts.]
Szymborska is a distinguished Polish poet, admired for her witty, often wry, coolly intelle...
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[In the review below, Beschta praises View with a Grain of Sand, calling the volume "a joy."]
Although her work has been translated into English before, Szymborska has not been widely re...
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[In the review below, the critic briefly considers Szymborska's poetic style.]
"So much world all at once—how it rustles and bustles!" Szymborska is constantly amazed and c...
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[Below, Vendler comments on Szymborska's evolution as a poet and establishes a context for her art.]
"Again, and as ever,… the most pressing questions / are naïve ones.�...
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[In the following essay, Hirsch provides an overview of Szymborska's career, analyzing subversive elements in her poetry.]
Wislawa Szymborska, with Zbigniew Herbert and Tadeusz Rózewicz,...
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[In the following essay, Gamerman reviews the themes of Szymborska's poetry.]
In "Evaluation of an Unwritten Poem," Wislawa Szymborska, the Polish poet who won the Nobel Prize for...
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[In the following essay, Murphy relates the reponses of other Polish writers to the announcement of Szymborska's award.]
Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska, a reclusive widow whose seductively simp...
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[In the following essay, the critic considers the significance of Szymborska's award to Polish letters.]
"Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world," Percy Shelley onc...
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[Below, Streitfield introduces the Nobel Prize winner to English-speaking readers.]
Vihs-WAH-vah sheem-BOHR-skah.
Pronouncing the name of the 1996 Nobel laureate in literature is the hardest part. Onc...
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[Below, Berlez offers reminiscences of Szymborska from friends and writers in Poland.]
Wislawa Szymborska, a self-effacing 73-year-old Polish poet who collects trashy postcards because she says trash ...
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[In the following essay, Smith focuses on the difference between two translated versions of a poem by Szymborska that appeared in both The New Yorker and The New Republic.]
There was a wee contretemps...
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[Below, Baranczak discusses Szymborska's poetics, citing the poet's wisdom for realizing "that what attracts people to poetry today is … its art of asking questions."...
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Wislawa Szymborska
Wislawa Szymborska
