SOURCE: A review of View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems, in Kliatt, Vol. 29, No. 5, September, 1995, p. 29.

[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 recognized here in the States. Here, her selected poems, wonderfully translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh, might well change that situation, bringing America into step with Europe, which acknowledges her as arguably Poland's leading female poet. This collection presents 100 poems taken from seven separate volumes. As such, it offers a broad perspective on her career, one which maintains an optimism and sense of wonder about the world while recognizing the trials of reality. In 1957 she says, "We've inherited hope—/ the gift of forgetting …" and in 1993 she points out that

      This terrifying world is not devoid of charms,
      of...