A wonderful collection. ( )

This volume is filled with gems. She addresses a very broad range of themes in these poems --– the folly of reductionism, randomness and contingency in human experience, the propensity to cruelty and injustice and virtually every modern irony you can think of. She uses simple, sure rhythms, and deliciously quirky, smart, playful and ironic imagery. The tone of these poems is consistent, but hard to describe -- passionately detached? Exuberantly ambivalent? Naively sophisticated?

The power of these poems is not so much the novelty of the ideas she expresses, but her ability to make us see and appreciate the wonderful ironies of common experience anew. Perhaps that’s the definition of the poet’s calling.

That these poems are translated from the Polish seems incredible to me. I have no way to judge the faithfulness of the translation to the original Polish, but these poems are absolutely brilliant in English. ( )

I like, for example, the one that begins:

Don't take jesters into outer space,
that's my advice.

Fourteen lifeless planets,
a few comets, two stars.
By the time you take off for the third star,
your jesters will be out of humor.

The cosmos is what it is--
namely, perfect.
Your jesters will never forgive it. ( )

Szymborska won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and with good reason. These are beautiful poems, sometimes cold and epic-feeling, but more often small, warm, and true. ( )