Wislawa Szymborska

Provides one hundred poems including the author's "View with a Grain of Sand," and sixty-four newly-translated selections.

Poems, New and Collected, 1957-1997

Collects translations of poems from throughout the author's career, including several new translations, including her entire final collection in English for the first time.

Collected and Last Poems

Translated and Introduced by Magnus J. Krynski and Robert A. Maguire Regarded as one of the best representatives since World War II of the rich and ancient art of poetry in Poland, Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012) is, in the translators' words, "that rarest of phenomena: a serious poet who commands a large audience in her native land." The seventy poems in this bilingual edition are among the largest and most representative offering of her work in English, with particular emphasis on the period since 1967. They illustrate virtually all her major themes and most of her important techniques. Describing Szymborka's poetry, Magnus Krynski and Robert Maguire write that her verse is marked by high seriousness, delightful inventiveness, a prodigal imagination, and enormous technical skill. She writes of the diversity, plenitude, and richness of the world, taking delight in observing and naming its phenomena. She looks on with wonder, astonishment, and amusement, but almost never with despair.

Seventy Poems

Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts

Illustrated with her own marvelous collages, this hilarious compilation of the Nobel Prize-winning poet's advice to writers is at once kind and droll

Advice for Writers

How to Start Writing (and When to Stop)

Amore a prima vista. Testo polacco a fronte

Joanna Trzeciak

"Miracle Fair is Szymborska at her very best."—Harvard Book Review Winner of the Heldt Prize for Translation. A new translation of the Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet, with an introduction by Czeslaw Milosz. This long-awaited volume samples the full range of Wislawa Szymborska's major themes: the ironies of love, the wonders of nature's beauty, and the illusory character of art. Szymborska's voice emerges as that of a gentle subversive, self-deprecating in its wit, yet graced with a gift for coaxing the extraordinary out of the ordinary.

Miracle Fair: Selected Poems of Wislawa Szymborska

Czarna piosenka

Júlio Sousa Gomes

Paisagem com grão de areia

Szymborska, tan reacia a hablar de su poesía, llevó durante años en la revista Vida literaria lo que podríamos denominar un «consultorio de escritores», en el que entre líneas, y con esa fina ironía presente en toda su obra, podemos entrever su particular concepto de la literatura. Łubin: "¿Cómo llegar a ser escritor?». La pregunta que nos hace usted es muy delicada. Es como cuando un niño le pregunta a su madre cómo se hacen los niños y la madre le dice que se lo explicará más tarde, que está muy ocupada, y el niño empieza a insistir: «Entonces explícame, aunque sólo sea cómo se hace la cabeza...». A ver, intentemos también nosotros explicar, al menos, la cabeza: pues bien, hay que tener algo de talento"

Correo literario

Letture facoltative

Zbigniew Herbert

Jacys zlosliwi bogowie zakpili z nas okrutnie

Pietro Marchesani

Quando giunse la notizia che il Premio Nobel per il 1996 era stato conferito a Wislawa Szymborska, molti giornali scrissero - il che non va a loro onore - che si trattava di una poetessa più o meno sconosciuta. In realtà Iosif Brodskij la considerava, insieme a Milosz e a Herbert, una delle grandi voci poetiche attuali. Ma è anche vero che la poesia della Szymborska, nella sua piana limpidezza e ingannevole semplicità, esige, per essere percepita, un orecchio molto fine. E al tempo stesso si può dire di lei che raramente un poeta moderno è riuscito a parlare di temi proibiti, perché troppo battuti, con tale impavida sicurezza di tocco, fino al punto di dedicare una delle sue liriche più perfette all'amore felice', questo 'scandalo nelle alte sfere della Vita1. Il volume è una raccolta, approvata dall'autrice, che attraversa tutta la sua opera a partire dal 1957 e include anche il bellissimo discorso pronunciato in occasione del conferimento del premio Nobel.

Vista con granello di sabbia. Poesie (1957-1993)

From a writer whom Charles Simic calls "one of the finest poets living" comes a collection of witty, compassionate, contemplative, and always surprising poems. Szymborska writes with verve about everything from love unremembered to keys mislaid in the grass. The poems will appear, for the first time, side by side with the Polish originals, in a book to delight new and old readers alike. EVERYTHING Everything- a bumptious, stuck-up word. It should be written in quotes. It pretends to miss nothing, to gather, hold, contain, and have. While all the while it's just a shred of a gale.

Monologue of a Dog

Wislawa Szymborska's poems are admired around the world, and her unsparing vision, tireless wit, and deep sense of humanity are cherished by countless readers. Unknown to most of them, however, Szymborska also worked for several decades as a columnist, reviewing a wide variety of books under the unassuming title "Nonrequired Reading." As readers of her poems would expect, the short prose pieces collected here are anything but ordinary. Reflecting the author's own eclectic tastes and interests, the pretexts for these ruminations range from books on wallpapering, cooking, gardening, and yoga, to more lofty volumes on opera and world literature. Unpretentious yet incisive, these charming pieces are on a par with Szymborska's finest lyrics, tackling the same large and small questions with a wonderful curiosity.

Prose Pieces

Nonrequired Reading

Einde en begin Verzamelde gedichten / druk 20

Hasta aquí

Marguerite Guzman Bouvard

Jane Hirshfield

Lars Gustafsson

Christopher Bursk

T. Weiss

Selected Poems, Alaya, Little Harbor, Journeys Over Water, Selected Poems

Quarterly Review of Literature

Clare Cavanagh

Stanislaw Baranczak

Poems New and Collected, 1957-1997

Ludzie na moscie

A poem by the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, illustrated for readers of all ages that will challenge assumptions about falling in love. They’re both convinced / that a sudden passion joined them. Such certainty is beautiful, / but uncertainty is more beautiful still. Love at First Sight is a poem about love and chance and destiny by the 1996 Polish winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Illustrated by Italian artist Beatrice Gasca Queirazza, Szymborska’s poem comes to life in entirely new ways for her readers and for lovers everywhere in this oversized book perfect for gift giving. Szymborska tells of two young lovers bound together in an instant—or were they? As the poem unfolds, the reader’s assumptions—like those of the lovers themselves—about certainty and destiny are utterly upended, revealing the paradox and mystery of fate. Here is randomness, tricks of memory, and chance, where noticing the smallest details of our intertwined lives is more essential than asking, Are we meant for each other? “Every beginning / is only a sequel, after all…”

Wislawa Szymborska

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