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Cheryl's Reviews > Map: Collected and Last Poems
Map: Collected and Last Poems
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Wislawa Szymborska was born in Poland in 1923. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1996. Clare Cavanagh was awarded the PEN Translation Prize for her work on Szymborska's poetry along with Stanislaw Baranczak.
I'm not able to pronounce the author's name or know but the surface features of her homeland. But I can tell you that reading the two hundred fifty poems in this collected volume of her work was accessible to me. Her knowledge of being human in this world is universal and luminous.
"Her 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
First Love
They say
the first love's most important.
That's very romantic,
but not my experience.
Something was and wasn't there between us,
something went on and went away.
My hands never tremble when I stumble on silly keepsakes
and a sheaf of letters tied with string
---not even ribbon.
Our only meeting after years:
two chairs chatting
at a chilly table.
Other loves still breathe deep inside me.
This one's too short of breath even to sigh.
Yet just exactly as it is,
it does what the others sill can't manage:
unremembered,
not even seen in dreams,
it introduces me to death.
Wislawa Szymborska died in 2012. MAP is the Collected and Last Poems of this extraordinary poet.
I'm not able to pronounce the author's name or know but the surface features of her homeland. But I can tell you that reading the two hundred fifty poems in this collected volume of her work was accessible to me. Her knowledge of being human in this world is universal and luminous.
"Her 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
First Love
They say
the first love's most important.
That's very romantic,
but not my experience.
Something was and wasn't there between us,
something went on and went away.
My hands never tremble when I stumble on silly keepsakes
and a sheaf of letters tied with string
---not even ribbon.
Our only meeting after years:
two chairs chatting
at a chilly table.
Other loves still breathe deep inside me.
This one's too short of breath even to sigh.
Yet just exactly as it is,
it does what the others sill can't manage:
unremembered,
not even seen in dreams,
it introduces me to death.
Wislawa Szymborska died in 2012. MAP is the Collected and Last Poems of this extraordinary poet.
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Reading Progress
January 5, 2018
– Shelved
January 5, 2018
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January 8, 2018
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January 17, 2018
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January 17, 2018
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Ken
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Jan 17, 2018 05:34PM
I still remember reading this at a Vermont B&B, up early, before the hostess even, sitting in one of the library's pre-dark circles of lamplight.
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I can see you in the library reading the poems. Love the image. Can certainly tell you are a writer.
Funny how certain books become forever linked with a time and a place. For me, Woodstock, VT, put Szymborska's poems on the MAP.
I like how she touches on heavy themes like death with a certain whiff of unruly down-to-earthness or sometimes humour.
Ken wrote: "Funny how certain books become forever linked with a time and a place. For me, Woodstock, VT, put Szymborska's poems on the MAP."Great connection between place and book title! For me, it's winter in East Texas with snow on the ground (very unusual) among a stand of pine trees. I picked up some of the pine cones for the memory.
Cheryl wrote: "Ken wrote: "Funny how certain books become forever linked with a time and a place. For me, Woodstock, VT, put Szymborska's poems on the MAP."Great connection between place and book title! For me,..."
Good thinking, collecting some artifacts to go with the memory and the book. I just have the memory and the book. Not bad, but not as good.
Ilse wrote: "I like how she touches on heavy themes like death with a certain whiff of unruly down-to-earthness or sometimes humour."
Yes, I would say the contrasts are what set her aside stylistically.
