Miracle Fair: Selected Poems of Wislawa Szymborska

I've always enjoyed Szymborska's work when I've come across it, so I'm somewhat surprised that I didn't enjoy this collection more. It isn't bad particularly, but it's also not up to the expectations I had from reading her work previously. Partly because of this, I'm tempted to blame it at least partly on the translator. I can't particularly say if this is fair since I haven't read the poems in their original form, but at the same time, I have read much of Szymborska's work previously, and from other translators. In the translator's note in the beginning, she writes that "a substantial number of these poems have never appeared in English translation before. Indeed several had been deemed untranslatable." Some things simply don't lend themselves to translations, and perhaps many of these poems were rightly in that category until being explored for this collection. The language and ideas are elegant, but many of them simply don't fully come across in meaning, even after repeated readings. I've never seen this with Szymborska's work before, and it was frustrating here--again, perhaps this is not the case in the originals and necessary nuances were left out for whatever reason. There are some gems here that I'll come back to, but frighteningly few for having come from this author.

In conclusion, I would highly recommend Wislawa Szymborska's work to anyone who enjoys poetry and/or beautiful and elegant writing and ideas; however, I would recommend work by a translator other than Joanna Trzeciak. This may be an unfair comment, but based on my experience and on some of the sentiments in the Translator's note, as well as the vast difference in the level of communication presented by various poems (some easily understood, some nearly impossible), it is the only conclusion I can reach to explain the collection and my reaction. Particularly taking into consideration that she "re-translated" poems already translated into English (she gives no further comment as to why they required further work), I have to assume that she is shaping these in some way that ends up changing the level of emotion and readability. ( )