From one of Europe’s most prominent and celebrated poets, a collection remarkable for its graceful lyricism. With acute irony tempered by a generous curiosity, Szymborska documents life’s improbability as well as its transient beauty to capture the wonder of existence. Preface by Mark Strand. Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh, winners of the PEN Translation Prize.
| Brueghel's Two Monkeys | 3 | |
| Notes from a Nonexistent Himalayan Expedition | 4 | |
| Nothing Twice | 6 | |
| Museum | 11 | |
| A Moment in Troy | 12 | |
| Clochard | 15 | |
| Vocabulary | 17 | |
| Travel Elegy | 18 | |
| An Unexpected Meeting | 20 | |
| Rubens' Women | 21 | |
| Coloratura | 23 | |
| Bodybuilders' Contest | 25 | |
| Poetry Reading | 26 | |
| The Tower of Babel | 27 | |
| Water | 28 | |
| Conversation with a Stone | 30 | |
| The Joy of Writing | 35 | |
| Landscape | 37 | |
| Family Album | 39 | |
| The Railroad Station | 40 | |
| Born | 42 | |
| Soliloquy for Cassandra | 45 | |
| A Byzantine Mosaic | 47 | |
| Beheading | 50 | |
| Pieta | 51 | |
| Returning Birds | 52 | |
| Thomas Mann | 53 | |
| Tarsier | 55 | |
| The Acrobat | 57 | |
| A Palaeolithic Fertility Fetish | 58 | |
| No End of Fun | 60 | |
| Could Have | 65 | |
| Theatre Impressions | 67 | |
| Voices | 69 | |
| The Letters of the Dead | 71 | |
| Advertisement | 72 | |
| Going Home | 74 | |
| Discovery | 75 | |
| Dinosaur Skeleton | 77 | |
| Birthday | 79 | |
| Allegro ma non troppo | 80 | |
| Autotomy | 82 | |
| Frozen Motion | 84 | |
| The Classic | 85 | |
| In Praise of Dreams | 87 | |
| True Love | 89 | |
| Under One Small Star | 91 | |
| A Large Number | 95 | |
| Thank-You Note | 97 | |
| Psalm | 99 | |
| Lot's Wife | 101 | |
| Seen from Above | 103 | |
| Experiment | 104 | |
| Smiles | 106 | |
| The Terrorist, He's Watching | 108 | |
| A Medieval Miniature | 110 | |
| In Praise of My Sister | 112 | |
| Hermitage | 114 | |
| Evaluation of an Unwritten Poem | 116 | |
| Warning | 118 | |
| The Onion | 120 | |
| The Suicide's Room | 122 | |
| In Praise of Feeling Bad About Yourself | 124 | |
| On the Banks of the Styx | 125 | |
| Utopia | 127 | |
| Pi | 129 | |
| Archeology | 133 | |
| View with a Grain of Sand | 135 | |
| Clothes | 137 | |
| On Death, without Exaggeration | 138 | |
| In Broad Daylight | 141 | |
| Our Ancestors' Short Lives | 143 | |
| Hitler's First Photograph | 145 | |
| The Century's Decline | 147 | |
| Children of Our Age | 149 | |
| Tortures | 151 | |
| Plotting with the Dead | 153 | |
| Writing a Resume | 155 | |
| Funeral | 157 | |
| An Opinion on the Question of Pornography | 159 | |
| A Tale Begun | 161 | |
| Into the Ark | 163 | |
| Miracle Fair | 165 | |
| The People on the Bridge | 167 | |
| Sky | 173 | |
| No Title Required | 175 | |
| The End and the Beginning | 178 | |
| Hatred | 181 | |
| Reality Demands | 184 | |
| Elegiac Calculation | 187 | |
| Cat in an Empty Apartment | 189 | |
| Parting with a View | 191 | |
| Seance | 194 | |
| Love at First Sight | 197 | |
| May 16, 1973 | 199 | |
| Maybe All This | 201 | |
| Slapstick | 203 | |
| Nothing's a Gift | 206 | |
| One Version of Events | 208 | |
| We're Extremely Fortunate | 213 |
Anonymous
Posted July 8, 2010
No text was provided for this review.
Overview
From one of Europe’s most prominent and celebrated poets, a collection remarkable for its graceful lyricism. With acute irony tempered by a generous curiosity, Szymborska documents life’s improbability as well as its transient beauty to capture the wonder of existence. Preface by Mark Strand. Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh, winners of the PEN Translation Prize.