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Julie's Reviews > Map: Collected and Last Poems
Map: Collected and Last Poems
by
by
8/10
For me, poetry happens, if it happens at all, on first sight. The first line is enough to do it: it can create a lifelong passion, a never ending reverence; or it can throw that poem on the heap of ashes that is relegated to memory's death. No in between for love.
There are times enough in this fine collection that Wislawa SzymborskÄ… has achieved that mark: those are the poems of acute insight into the heart and soul: the hurt, the consolation, the compassion.
Other poems are filled with ironic twists, and are gleefully unrepentant for revenge. Such twists and turns. I love when a poet surprises me with her candour, her outspokenness, her honesty.
What I appreciate most in her work is that nothing is conventional: the humour, the disdain, the pity, the anger, the acceptance: all these qualities receive a new "washing up" and delivery. What you expect to be sorry about, and what you expect to be angry about all gets turned on its ear and you find your own conventions and accepted truths getting a proper tongue lashing.
A worthy contender for returning to, occasionally, when the world gets a bit rough with you.
Some of my favourites. (The bold is the title in which the poem first appeared.)
Calling Out To Yeti (1957)
Classifieds 32-33
Moment of Silence 34
Funeral (I) 39-41
Salt (1962)
Museum 62
Vocabulary 69
Without A Title 72
Starvation Camp Near Jaslo 76
Ballad 78-79
No End Of Fun (1967)
Memory Finally 111-112
Family Album 115
The Railroad Station 118-119
Could Have (1972)
Could Have 155
Old folks Home 163
A Speech At the Lost and Found 176
Under One Small Star 192
A Large Number (1976)
Lot's Wife 203
Life While You Wait 228-229
The People on the Bridge (1986)
On Death, Without Exaggeration 246-247
In Broad Daylight 250-251
Our Ancestors' Short Lives 252-253
Tortures 260-261
The End and the Beginning (1993)
The End And The Beginning 286-287
Cat In An Empty Apartment 296-297
Séance 300-301
Love At First Sight 302-303
Moment (2002)
First Love 335
A Contribution To Statistics 341-342
Some People 343
Return Baggage 345-346
Lot's Wife
They say I looked back out of curiosity.
But I could have had other reasons.
I looked back mourning my silver bowl.
Carelessly, while tying my sandal strap.
So I wouldn't have to keep staring at the righteous nape
of my husband Lot's neck.
From the sudden conviction that if I dropped dead
he wouldn't so much as hesitate.
From the disobedience of the meek.
Checking for pursuers.
Struck by the silence, hoping God had changed His mind.
Our two daughters were already vanishing over the hilltop.
I felt age within me. Distance.
The futility of wandering. Torpor.
I looked back setting my bundle down.
I looked back not knowing where to set my foot.
Serpents appeared on my path,
spiders, field mice, baby vultures.
They were neither good nor evil now -- every living thing
was simply creeping or hopping along in the mass panic.
I looked back in desolation.
In shame because we had stolen away.
Wanting to cry out, to go home.
Or only when a sudden gust of wind
unbound my hair and lifted up my robe.
It seemed to me that they were watching from the walls of Sodom
and bursting into thunderous laughter again and again.
I looked back in anger.
To savor their terrible fate.
I looked back for all the reasons given above.
I looked back involuntarily.
It was only a rock that turned underfoot, growling at me.
It was a sudden crack that stopped me in my tracks.
A hamster on its hind paws tottered on the edge.
It was then we both glanced back.
No, no. I ran on.
I crept, I flew upward
until darkness fell from the heavens
and with it scorching gravel and dead birds.
I couldn't breathe and spun around and around.
Anyone who saw me must have thought I was dancing.
It's not inconceivable that my eyes were open.
It's possible I fell facing the city.
====
For me, poetry happens, if it happens at all, on first sight. The first line is enough to do it: it can create a lifelong passion, a never ending reverence; or it can throw that poem on the heap of ashes that is relegated to memory's death. No in between for love.
There are times enough in this fine collection that Wislawa SzymborskÄ… has achieved that mark: those are the poems of acute insight into the heart and soul: the hurt, the consolation, the compassion.
Other poems are filled with ironic twists, and are gleefully unrepentant for revenge. Such twists and turns. I love when a poet surprises me with her candour, her outspokenness, her honesty.
What I appreciate most in her work is that nothing is conventional: the humour, the disdain, the pity, the anger, the acceptance: all these qualities receive a new "washing up" and delivery. What you expect to be sorry about, and what you expect to be angry about all gets turned on its ear and you find your own conventions and accepted truths getting a proper tongue lashing.
A worthy contender for returning to, occasionally, when the world gets a bit rough with you.
Some of my favourites. (The bold is the title in which the poem first appeared.)
Calling Out To Yeti (1957)
Classifieds 32-33
Moment of Silence 34
Funeral (I) 39-41
Salt (1962)
Museum 62
Vocabulary 69
Without A Title 72
Starvation Camp Near Jaslo 76
Ballad 78-79
No End Of Fun (1967)
Memory Finally 111-112
Family Album 115
The Railroad Station 118-119
Could Have (1972)
Could Have 155
Old folks Home 163
A Speech At the Lost and Found 176
Under One Small Star 192
A Large Number (1976)
Lot's Wife 203
Life While You Wait 228-229
The People on the Bridge (1986)
On Death, Without Exaggeration 246-247
In Broad Daylight 250-251
Our Ancestors' Short Lives 252-253
Tortures 260-261
The End and the Beginning (1993)
The End And The Beginning 286-287
Cat In An Empty Apartment 296-297
Séance 300-301
Love At First Sight 302-303
Moment (2002)
First Love 335
A Contribution To Statistics 341-342
Some People 343
Return Baggage 345-346
Lot's Wife
They say I looked back out of curiosity.
But I could have had other reasons.
I looked back mourning my silver bowl.
Carelessly, while tying my sandal strap.
So I wouldn't have to keep staring at the righteous nape
of my husband Lot's neck.
From the sudden conviction that if I dropped dead
he wouldn't so much as hesitate.
From the disobedience of the meek.
Checking for pursuers.
Struck by the silence, hoping God had changed His mind.
Our two daughters were already vanishing over the hilltop.
I felt age within me. Distance.
The futility of wandering. Torpor.
I looked back setting my bundle down.
I looked back not knowing where to set my foot.
Serpents appeared on my path,
spiders, field mice, baby vultures.
They were neither good nor evil now -- every living thing
was simply creeping or hopping along in the mass panic.
I looked back in desolation.
In shame because we had stolen away.
Wanting to cry out, to go home.
Or only when a sudden gust of wind
unbound my hair and lifted up my robe.
It seemed to me that they were watching from the walls of Sodom
and bursting into thunderous laughter again and again.
I looked back in anger.
To savor their terrible fate.
I looked back for all the reasons given above.
I looked back involuntarily.
It was only a rock that turned underfoot, growling at me.
It was a sudden crack that stopped me in my tracks.
A hamster on its hind paws tottered on the edge.
It was then we both glanced back.
No, no. I ran on.
I crept, I flew upward
until darkness fell from the heavens
and with it scorching gravel and dead birds.
I couldn't breathe and spun around and around.
Anyone who saw me must have thought I was dancing.
It's not inconceivable that my eyes were open.
It's possible I fell facing the city.
====
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Map.
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Reading Progress
January 18, 2023
– Shelved
February 7, 2023
–
Started Reading
February 8, 2023
–
3.02%
"How many tears ran dry before you lent a hand?
from Questions You Ask Yourself"
page
14
from Questions You Ask Yourself"
February 8, 2023
–
5.6%
"So here we are, the naked lovers,
lovely, as we both agree,
with eyelids our only covers ...
From Flagrance"
page
26
lovely, as we both agree,
with eyelids our only covers ...
From Flagrance"
February 8, 2023
–
7.11%
"WANTED: someone to mourn
the elderly who die
alone in old folks' homes.
from Classifieds"
page
33
the elderly who die
alone in old folks' homes.
from Classifieds"
February 18, 2023
–
Finished Reading
Comments Showing 1-14 of 14 (14 new)
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Wonderful review, Julie. Thank you so much for writing out Lot's Wife. Makes me think women (Margaret Atwood? Alice Walker? Wisława Szymborska?, etc...) should just go ahead and re-write, re-imagine all of the stories for all of the women in the Bible / Torah / sky god's holy books - because the dudes who re-wrote the stories over and over during the hundreds of years that followed clearly left out all the good stuff!
Fionnuala wrote: "The titles of the collections and of the poems themselves are all very thought provoking, Julie—like invitations to create one's own poems. "There is inspiration enough in this collection to re-imagine an entire world, Fionnuala -- much as she does in the titular poem for this collection, Map. In fact, (and interesting that you picked that up) I spent a lot of time doing just that: creating my own endings, my own versions.
As I began reading this collection, I wasn't quite sure what to make of it, but as I delved deeper, I liked her more and more. Only a few of her poems initially hit me with "love at first sight" ... but maybe second sight will do just as well, and live longer.
Here's her Map:
Flat as the table
it’s placed on.
Nothing moves beneath it
and it seeks no outlet.
Above—my human breath
creates no stirring air
and leaves its total surface
undisturbed.
Its plains, valleys are always green,
uplands, mountains are yellow and brown,
while seas, oceans remain a kindly blue
beside the tattered shores.
Everything here is small, near, accessible.
I can press volcanoes with my fingertip,
stroke the poles without thick mittens,
I can with a single glance
encompass every desert
with the river lying just beside it.
A few trees stand for ancient forests,
you couldn’t lose your way among them.
In the east and west,
above and below the equator�
quiet like pins dropping,
and in every black pinprick
people keep on living.
Mass graves and sudden ruins
are out of the picture.
Nations� borders are barely visible
as if they wavered—to be or not.
I like maps, because they lie.
Because they give no access to the vicious truth.
Because great-heartedly, good-naturedly
they spread before me a world
not of this world.
Thorough review, and thanks for reminding me of a wife's Lot in life. I often pity mine. She says: "Deservedly so" but has yet to write a poem about it.
Ah ha so you did get to the end of the book! I'm so glad you "soldiered on" with this one and that it managed to get 8/10 bullets from your firing squad, even though you were not yourself in the right mood to fully welcome Szymborska's genius. Imagine the rating you'd have given her had you been in the right mood? 11/10 at the very least! This is a perfect review for a book of poems. When you write: What you expect to be sorry about, and what you expect to be angry about all gets turned on its ear and you find your own conventions and accepted truths getting a proper tongue lashing you pin down exactly what it is that makes her writing so appealing to me. It could not have been better expressed.
So many of the poems you listed as favourites are mine too.
dianne wrote: "Wonderful review, Julie. Thank you so much for writing out Lot's Wife. Makes me think women (Margaret Atwood? Alice Walker? Wisława Szymborska?, etc...) should just go ahead and re-write, re-imagi..."
Thanks, Dianne. I appreciate your kind words -- and you make a great point. There's so much (too much) that is left unsaid by all the women, in all the 'holy books' of the world that it would be a good start to re-imagine their words. Who is she really would be one question, and Don't judge her until you've walked her path would be a great way to start.
To my mind, Szymborska mouths the words of so much of women's pain, thus revealed:
So I wouldn't have to keep staring at the righteous nape
of my husband Lot's neck.
From the sudden conviction that if I dropped dead
he wouldn't so much as hesitate.
It occurs to me that we don't even have a name for her in the christian bible ... she is simply Lot's wife.
Stepping away from Szymborska's work for a moment, and following the thread of Lot's Wife, here's another poem, by Anna Akhmatova:
And the just man trailed God's shining agent,
over a black mountain, in his giant track,
while a restless voice kept harrying his woman:
"It's not too late, you can still look back
at the red towers of your native Sodom,
the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed,
at the empty windows set in the tall house
where sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed."
A single glance: a sudden dart of pain
stitching her eyes before she made a sound . . .
Her body flaked into transparent salt,
and her swift legs rooted to the ground.
Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem
too insignificant for our concern?
Yet in my heart I never will deny her,
who suffered death because she chose to turn.
Ken wrote: "Thorough review, and thanks for reminding me of a wife's Lot in life. I often pity mine. She says: "Deservedly so" but has yet to write a poem about it."I look forward to her 'grand-reveal', in poetry, or prose, Ken. What tales her thoughts could tell, I'm sure. : )
Ulysse wrote: "Ah ha so you did get to the end of the book! I'm so glad you "soldiered on" with this one and that it managed to get 8/10 bullets from your firing squad, even though you were not yourself in the ri..."It is thanks to you in large part, Ulysse, that I did finish this in a better mood -- for you saw with your poet's heart and poet's mind what I did not appreciate, initially. I soldiered on because I saw the sparks of genius, here and there; and then, suddenly, those sparks became more frequent, and brighter.
As both you and Ken have noted, her poetry gets better and better -- which of course is to be expected, as you grow and gain wisdom. (unless you're a total turnip head. ; ) ... ! )
I'm so appreciative to have gathered a few very good goodreads friends who can shine the light on what I might otherwise miss on my path. I've gone astray a few times, but a good (metaphorical) cuff on the ear to wake me up has never hurt me! ; D --- and indeed has provided much benefit, for to think what I would have missed is frightful!
Julie wrote: "Ulysse wrote: "Ah ha so you did get to the end of the book! I'm so glad you "soldiered on" with this one and that it managed to get 8/10 bullets from your firing squad, even though you were not you..."Oh I too am thankful for those few good Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ friends who have made my reading life immeasurably richer. Such bright sensitive minds who write amazing reviews and who actually read and enjoy Szymborska. I even sometimes wonder if these people are really real :))
Julie wrote: "dianne wrote: "Wonderful review, Julie. Thank you so much for writing out Lot's Wife. Makes me think women (Margaret Atwood? Alice Walker? Wisława Szymborska?, etc...) should just go ahead and re-..."
Thank you for Anna Akhmatova’s wonderful poem.
Yes, I would have had difficulty leaving a tolerant city like Sodom myself.
"she is simply Lot's wife..." Exactly!
I remember being a little girl in the 60s and wondering why when I grew up I would have to be renamed "Mrs. Somebody Else" ?
A frightening future loomed, or so it seemed. What other parts of me would I have to sacrifice?
The enforced invisibility and anonymity of women, from female infanticide, sati pillars (real and symbolic) to the ousting, banishing of widows from tribes - some practices historical, yes, but many still in place.
With so many struggling young women -
(see democracynow.org /2023/2/20/ “Log Off�: 1 in 3 U.S. Girls Weighs Suicide. Will Congress Restrict Big Tech?)
we really need different stories!
Julie wrote: "…Here's her Map""Flat as the table
it’s placed on.
Nothing moves beneath it....
…â¶Ä¦â¶Ä¦â¶Ä¦â¶Ä¦â¶Ä¦â¶Ä�
In the east and west,
above and below the equator�
quiet like pins dropping,
and in every black pinprick
people keep on living.
Mass graves and sudden ruins
are out of the picture.
Nations� borders are barely visible
as if they wavered—to be or not.
I like maps, because they lie.
Because they give no access to the vicious truth.
Because great-heartedly, good-naturedly
they spread before me a world
not of this world ..."
Her poems start out deceptively simple, don't they? You almost think, I could write this!
But then half-way through, as in this one, they knock your poor deluded brain out!
dianne wrote: "I remember being a little girl in the 60s and wondering why when I grew up I would have to be renamed "Mrs. Somebody Else"You were feeling the angst of the age, Dianne; and it sounds to me that you were ahead of the curve of self-annihilation. I don't remember being nearly that self-aware at that point in my life: I just wanted to hit the road and put flowers in my hair. ; ) (But I was too young, so I had to settle for dandelion chains in my backyard!)
I do think that more stories need to be written for young women, for young girls, for boys and girls from a girl's point of view, from a woman's point of view.
Having said that, what occurs to me is that there are plenty of stories that have already been written by women, but they haven't been read. Not read enough. I know it is only in the last decade that I discovered Charlotte Perkins Gilman, for instance. And I remember at the time having a discussion with one of my oldest friends, and saying ... why were we never introduced, back in uni days, to all these women that we're discovering NOW.
It's time to catch up and pay that knowledge forward to all those young ones coming after us, men and women, boys and girls. "Knowledge ain't for keeping."
Ulysse wrote: "I even sometimes wonder if these people are really real :)"For all we know, we could be different parts of HAL, talking to "himself", Ulysse. We are all just on a space odyssey, every one of us, in any case... ; -)
Fionnuala wrote: "Her poems start out deceptively simple, don't they? You almost think, I could write this!But then half-way through, as in this one, they knock your poor deluded brain out!.."
Haha, yes, Fionnula, you're right. Despite thinking that I'm a real "smarty pants" at times, while reading her poems, by the end of them I realize she has taken me somewhere quite unexpected, to which conclusion I would have never come on my own.
Most likely, given the same vehicle, I would have driven that bus right over the cliff. :- )
And the way you've grouped them almost makes a set of haiku-like verses.
And I like the Lot's Wife poem a lot.