April is National Poetry Month which makes for a great opportunity to dive into the pages of poets from around the world. A great place to start would be the work of Polish poet Wisława Szymborska who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996. For those of you who grew up without a Polish heritage, its pronounced “vees-WAH-vah”. Since the award was first given in 1901 only 19 poets have won—a distinction she shares with another poet from Poland, Czesław Miłosz—and the committee praised Szymborska for “poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality” and referred to her as the “Mozart of poetry” but with “the fury of Beethoven” which is quite the compliment for this maestro of language. Translated into over 40 languages worldwide, we English speakers can enjoy her work through the efforts of translators Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Barańczak, such as in the tome that is her collected works: Map.
The Three Oddest Words
When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.
When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.
When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no non-being can hold.
Born in 1923, Szymborska spent most of her life living in Krakow, Poland. Her poetry often hones in on quiet, introspective life and domestic affairs writ large against a landscape of history, such as the Second World War and the Soviet occupation of Poland. “After every war / someone’s got to tidy up,” she writes in her poem The End and the Beginning. When war came to Poland, Szymborska continued her studies in underground classrooms and worked as a railroad laborer to avoid being sent to Germany for forced labor. While she initially adhered to party standards in her work, Szymborska would be critical of the Soviet party and befriended many dissidents and frequently communicated with the intelligentsia outside Eastern Europe. While she primarily wrote poetry, she also dabbled in prose which you can enjoy in her book Nonrequired Reading.
“Poets are poetry, writers are prose,” Szymborska wrote on the difference between poets and writers, “Prose can hold anything including poetry / But in poetry there is only room for poetry.” Barring her soul, Szymborska often addresses her self-conscious feelings about being a poet, something she admits in her poem Some Like Poetry that, perhaps, only two in one thousand people enjoy poetry. “They publicly confess to being poets only reluctantly, as if they were a little ashamed of it,” she says of poets in her Nobel Lecture, yet Szymborska has sold nearly as many books of poetry in her home country of Poland as any of the bestselling novelists have there. Her work is often quite witty, blending darkness with charm in a way that is always rather empowering. Her poem On Death, Without Exaggeration, for example, is one of the most optimistic poems about death I have encountered, illustrating Death as a bumbling employee of his trade that “does the job awkwardly” and “can’t even get the things done / that are part of its trade: / dig a grave / make a coffin / clean up after itself” reminding us that each breath we take is a victory against Death. There is a signature bemused flair for the human condition that seeps into each poem that makes us consider our place in the universe and the happenstance of chance that brought us here. "I know nothing of the role I play / I only know it’s mine. I can’t exchange it," she writes in the poem Life While You Wait, a humorous look at life as if it were a stage play where we all wish we "could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance, / or repeat a single Thursday that has passed! / But here comes Friday with a script I haven’t seen," and we all must carry on. Her words help us shoulder that burden and continue on with pride and joy in our hearts.
While this great poet passed away in 2012 at the age of 88 of lung cancer, she has left a lasting legacy of poetry and thought for us to enjoy. You can find her work and the work of many other phenomenal poets here at Herrick District Library, but before you go hunting for some great Poetry Month reads, I’d like to share one of my favorite of Szymborska’s poems with you:
Love at First Sight
They’re both convinced
that a sudden passion joined them.
Such certainty is beautiful,
but uncertainty is more beautiful still.
Since they’d never met before, they’re sure
that there’d been nothing between them.
But what’s the word from the streets, staircases, hallways—
perhaps they’ve passed by each other a million times?
I want to ask them
if they don’t remember—
a moment face to face
in some revolving door?
perhaps a “sorry” muttered in a crowd?
a curt “wrong number” caught in the receiver?—
but I know the answer.
No, they don’t remember.
They’d be amazed to hear
that Chance has been toying with them
now for years.
Not quite ready yet
to become their Destiny,
it pushed them close, drove them apart,
it barred their path,
stifling a laugh,
and then leaped aside.
There were signs and signals,
even if they couldn’t read them yet.
Perhaps three years ago
or just last Tuesday
a certain leaf fluttered
from one shoulder to another?
Something was dropped and then picked up.
Who knows, maybe the ball that vanished
into childhood’s thicket?
There were doorknobs and doorbells
where one touch had covered another
beforehand.
Suitcases checked and standing side by side.
One night, perhaps, the same dream,
grown hazy by morning.
Every beginning
is only a sequel, after all,
and the book of events
is always open halfway through.
Check out more poets from our collection:
"Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful." -Rita Dove herrickdl adultpicks
