A new collected volume from the Nobel Prize winning poet, with over thirty poems never previously published together in English, including the thirteen poems from the final Polish collection, Enough.
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA (1923–2012) was born in Poland and worked as a poetry editor, translator, and columnist. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996. Her books include Monologue of a Dog, Map: Collected and Last Poems, and Poems New and Collected: 1957–1997.
"Both plain-spoken and luminous…Szymborska’s skepticism, her merry,
mischievous irreverence and her thirst for the surprise of fresh
perception make her the enemy of all tyrannical certainties. Hers
is the best of the Western mind—free, restless, questioning." — New
York Times Book Review
"Vast, intimate, and charged with the warmth of a life fully
imagined to the end, there's no better place for those unfamiliar
with her work to begin." — Vogue
"An extraordinary and vital summation of Szymborska's decidedly
modest output...Not only is Szymborska a major poet of the last
half century but Map, as a reading experience, is wonderful,
illuminating and enriching, a reminder that poetry can be direct,
unadorned and still deeply moving...Weigh the mastery of Wislawa
Szymborska, read Map, read any of her poems this year, the 20th
anniversary of her Nobel Prize, if only for a short while." —
Literary Hub
"Nobel laureate Szymborska's gorgeous posthumous collection,
translated and edited by her confidant, Cavanagh, with Baranczak,
includes more than 250 poems, selected from 13 books, dating back
to 1952, as well as previously unreleased poems from as far back as
1944. This revered Polish poet, who came to fame well after the
poet Charles Simic first handed her work to an editor, interweaves
insights into the suffering experienced during WWII and the Cold
War brutalities of Stalin with catchy, realistic, colloquial
musings on obvious and overlooked aspects of survival. Her poems
are revelatory yet rooted in the everyday. She writes about living
with horrors, and about ordinary lives: people in love, at work,
enjoying a meal. Throughout, Szymborska considers loss and
fragility, as when former lovers walk past each other and an aging
professor is no longer allowed his vodka and cigarettes. She
writes, too, of the imprecision of memory, and in the title poem,
the discovery that maps “give no access to the vicious truth." This
is a brilliant and important collection." — Booklist (starred
review)
"Szymborska (1923–2012), winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in
Literature, has her vast and impressive poetic repertoire on full
display in this posthumously published volume. Ordered
chronologically, the book reveals her development over seven
decades, including a gradual departure from end rhyme and the
sharpening of her wit. As multitudinous as Whitman, she conveyed
deep feeling through vivid, surreal imagery and could revive
clichéd language by reconnecting it to the body in startling ways:
“Listen,/ how your heart pounds inside me." To say that Szymborska
wore many hats as a poet is an understatement: odes, critiques, and
persona poems are just a few of the forms her writing took. Yet,
despite their diversity, the constants of her poems were nuance and
observational humor: 'Four billion people on this earth,/ but my
imagination is still the same.' Also apparent is Szymborska's rare
ability to present an epiphany in a single line, and her bravery in
writing toward death: 'But time is short. I write.' Ever the
student, she obsessively explored the histories and processes of
writing, never far from penning another Ars Poetica. 'Everything
here is small, near, accessible,' Szymborska writes in the title
poem—a maxim about the way the reader feels within her lines." —
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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