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Title: Miracle Fair: Selected Poems of Wislawa Szymborska by Wislawa Szymborska, Joanna Trzeciak ISBN: 0-393-04939-6 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: May, 2001 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: On Szymborska
Comment: This is a splendid collection of verse. Szymborska's work is insightful and remarkably deep. This collection has a Forward written by Czeslaw Milosz, who comments that "Szymborska offers a world where one can breathe...."
Miracle Fair begins with "Commemoration" and "Openness," which attempt to situate mortal beings in a natural world full of splendor, mystery, and awesome wonder. This is a lovely collection, which includes "A Dream," "Cat in an Empty Apartment," and "Love At First Sight." There are other moving and poignant poems here, such as "Starvation Camp at Jaslo," and "Turn of the Century."
S's verse is very human in the sense that it reminds us of the smallness of daily existence and the saving grace that can be found in the 'whispering trees.' It also has a vision of historical integration, whereby the ghosts of unfortunate memories speak to us softly.
Rating: 5
Summary: Wonderful poems on important things
Comment: Polish Nobel winner Wislawa Szymborska was born in 1923. She's lived through a lot, and she has a highly developed social conscience. She is concerned about ordinary life, love, war, death, and meaning. In poem after beautifully translated poem, she shows her understanding of the things of this world, the mysteriousness of life, and the things that might matter the most.
I reread these poems after the events of September 11th and was astonished to find so much of use to me in thinking about the unthinkable, really. In "A Thank-You Note," she writes "I owe a lot/to those I do not love." In the incredible "Cat in an Empty Apartment" Szymborska takes a cat's point of view, noting "Something here isn't starting/at its usual time./Something here isn't happening as it should./Somebody had been here and had been,/ and then had stubbornly disappeared/and now is stubbornly absent."
Szymborska knows that there are not only unimaginable horrors in the world, but also "miracles," small truths that are awesome and often wonderful - not because of any religious or magical event, but because they remind us, once again, of our humanity and of what good things might be possible. She treasures ordinary life, love, physicality - and communion. Her poems on love (and lovers) are beautiful, and beautifully simple.
She cautions against war in "The End and the Beginning," reminding the reader that "After every war/someone has to clean up./Things won't/straighten themselves up, after all." She wryly and trenchantly describes war's motives in "Hatred." Hatred, she insists, "is not like other feelings," and "gives birth to causes/which rouse it to life."
Szymborska's vision is one worth taking in, reflecting upon, and learning from. Current events aside, Szymborska's a terrific teacher of poetry.
This is a wonderful collection of poems.
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Title: Poems New and Collected 1957-1997 by Wislawa Szymborska, Stanislaw Baranczak, Clare Cavanagh, Stanisaw Baranczak ISBN: 0156011468 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: November, 2000 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts by Wislawa Szymborska, Magnus J. Kruyski, Robert A. Maguire ISBN: 0691013802 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 August, 1981 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Nonrequired Reading: Prose Pieces by Wislawa Szymborska, Clare Cavanagh ISBN: 0151006601 Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: October, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems by Wislawa Szymborska, Stanisaw Baranczak, Clare Cavanagh ISBN: 0156002167 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: May, 1995 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Poems of Akhmatova : Izbrannye Stikhi by Stanley Kunitz, Anna Akhmatova, Max Hayward ISBN: 0395860032 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 30 May, 1997 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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