<![CDATA[Poems New and Collected]]>

false <![CDATA[Poems New and Collected]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166131892m/10205.jpg 10205 3 All poets, according to Wislawa Szymborska, are in a perpetual dialogue with the phrase I don't know. "Each poem," she writes in her 1996 Nobel Lecture, "marks an effort to answer this statement, but as soon as the final period hits the page, the poet begins to hesitate, starts to realize that this particular answer was pure makeshift, absolutely inadequate." As a self-portrait, at least, this is fairly accurate. From the beginning, Szymborska has indeed wrestled with the demon of epistemology. Yet even in her earliest poems, such as "Atlantis," she delivered her speculations with a human--which is to say, a gently ironic--face: They were or they weren't. On an island or not. An ocean or not an ocean Swallowed them up or it didn't. Fifteen years later, when her 1972 collection, Could Have, appeared, Szymborska seemed to have made some major inroads into her notorious ignorance. Now she confessed to at least a shred of comprehension, stressing, however, that such knowledge has come at a terrible price: "We read the letters of the dead like helpless gods, / but gods, nonetheless, since we know the dates that follow. / We know which debts will never be repaid. / Which widows will remarry with the corpse still warm." And even in her most recent work, the poet continues to gravitate toward the admirable emptiness of, say, the clouds: "Unburdened by memory of any kind, / they float easily over the facts." Ultimately, though, the joke is on Szymborska, whose poems have grown more witty, more humane, and more tender--in other words, more knowing--with each passing year. View with a Grain of Sand remains an excellent point of entry to Szymborska's oeuvre, but Poems New and Collected is the place to go for a wide-angle view of this superlative and sardonic writer. 12930 1998 Poems New and Collected total:269|5:162|4:77|3:25|2:5|1:0| 269 1203 346 27 5 0 false false Thu Sep 17 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Apr 30 21:45:11 -0700 2009 Thu Sep 17 11:20:57 -0700 2009
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::Conversation With A Stone::

I knock at the stone's front door.
"It's only me, let me come in.
I want to enter your insides,
have a look round,
breathe my fill of you."

...more...]]> 5 0 false false Sat Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2006 Sat Jan 19 11:53:47 -0800 2008 Sat Jan 19 11:55:22 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Thu Jun 19 21:22:54 -0700 2008 Thu Jun 19 21:31:13 -0700 2008
This is what I see in my dreams about final exams:
two monkeys, chained to the floor, sit on the windowsill,
the sky behind them flutters,
the sea is taking its bath.
The exam is History o...more...]]> 5 0 true false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2004 Tue Oct 16 15:14:27 -0700 2007 Thu Nov 01 16:56:50 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Nov 30 11:53:14 -0800 2008 Sun Nov 30 11:55:04 -0800 2008 A fearless poet whose truly creative thought uplifts one's spirit and mind...]]> 2 0 false false Sun Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 09 11:18:55 -0800 2009 Thu Mar 12 00:31:54 -0700 2009 more...]]> 0 0 false false Sun Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Aug 05 18:52:40 -0700 2008 Tue Aug 05 18:59:25 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Nov 26 17:43:26 -0800 2007 Mon Nov 26 17:47:12 -0800 2007
She's got an interesting way of seeing the world, an...more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Sep 27 09:13:46 -0700 2009 Tue Sep 29 00:23:40 -0700 2009 ]]> 5 0 false false Sat Apr 01 00:00:00 -0800 2000 Sat Feb 14 18:53:44 -0800 2009 Sat Feb 14 18:54:46 -0800 2009 3 0 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Sat Aug 15 14:14:10 -0700 2009 Sat Aug 15 14:15:09 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Tue Dec 25 14:23:33 -0800 2007 Tue Dec 25 14:31:14 -0800 2007 more...]]> 5 0 false false Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2001 Tue Jun 12 22:01:28 -0700 2007 Tue Jun 12 22:06:16 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Dec 10 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Fri Nov 07 11:05:05 -0800 2008 Wed Dec 10 07:07:49 -0800 2008 4 0 false false Sat Sep 19 02:15:06 -0700 2009 Sat Nov 07 03:50:21 -0800 2009
Her poetry has the power and the strength of simplicity without insisting on metric structures.
Reading what Szymborska wrote and writes I have th...more...]]> 5 0 false false Thu Oct 09 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Fri Apr 11 16:14:28 -0700 2008 Thu Oct 09 07:26:03 -0700 2008 many times more...]]> 5 0 false false Wed Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2003 Thu Jan 10 13:07:53 -0800 2008 Thu Jan 10 13:10:05 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Nov 15 13:52:40 -0800 2009 Fri Oct 30 17:46:21 -0700 2009 Fri Oct 30 17:46:35 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Mon Jan 28 02:17:14 -0800 2008 Thu Sep 13 00:17:37 -0700 2007 Thu Sep 13 00:18:49 -0700 2007 4 0 false false Thu May 15 16:13:26 -0700 2008 Thu May 15 16:15:25 -0700 2008 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=10205