[New-Poetry] Szymborska's 'View': Small Truths Sharply Etched

[jforjames at aol.com]

Hmm...Other poets are as unnecessary as grapefruit juice?




Szymborska is not merely a great writer, like many others; she is a necessary writer, as necessary as toast.



-----Original Message-----
From: JforJames at aol.com
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
Sent: Tue, 5 Jun 2007 11:00 pm
Subject: [New-Poetry] Szymborska's 'View': Small Truths Sharply Etched



http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10721773

By Adam Gopnik
 Szymborska's 'View': Small Truths Sharply Etched

 

Audio for this story will be available at approx. 7:00 p.m. ET
  
Her poems take small subjects and make much of them. In her poetry, a child about to pull a tablecloth from a table becomes the type of every scientist beginning an experiment. ...”
 

 

 All Things Considered, June 5, 2007 · Every other year, it seems, the Nobel Prize in literature goes to an obscure European writer, full of hard consonants and solemn purposes, whom we all agree to honor for a day and forget all about right after.

 

This list of the Great Obscure is long, but the bright exception to it is the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska, who won the Nobel in 1996. Szymborska is not merely a great writer, like many others; she is a necessary writer, as necessary as toast. Every month, it seems, I give to someone a copy of one of her books and get for her work, in response, not mere admiration or respect but eyes alight with delight, recognition, laughter and that special kind of happiness that comes from seeing a small truth articulated as a sharp ironic point, an emotion given a shape neither all too familiar nor all too abstract.





See what's free at AOL.com. 



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