I just bought this book by Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012), winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996, called Poems, New and Collected (1998).
I’ve been wanting to get a collection of hers for years after sampling some of her work in the poetry section of a Borders book store.
I’m so glad I finally did.
Below are 10 poem titles that encourage my reading because they’re surprising, strange, mysterious, ironic, moving, or they touch on an idea I like.
(A bonus 5 phrases since we skipped last week to pay tribute to my dog.)
- Greeting the Supersonics
- Notes from a Nonexistent Himalayan Expedition
- Returning Birds
- A Palaeolithic Fertility Fetish
- Evaluation of an Unwritten Poem
- A Medieval Miniature
- The Onion
- No Title Required
- Elegiac Calculation
- Maybe All This
The book holds over 180 poems from 8 different collections published 1957-1997.
Approved Titles
Some of the collection’s poems I’ve read and enjoyed so far include:
- Coloratura (celebrates a bird’s song in the spirit of Keats‘ “Ode to a Nightingale”)
- Clochard (of spirits and statues)
- The Railroad Station (existential romance)
- Poetry Reading (funny, ironic)
- Over Wine (lyrical, intimate)
The Nobel Prize website also shares a selection of five Szymborska poems in English, Polish, and Swedish:
- Utopia
- On Death, Without Exaggeration
- The Three Oddest Words
- Possibilities
- The Joy of Writing
A readily noticeable theme of her work is the exploration of paradox, specifically the nature of being and nothingness (à la Sartre), absence and illusion, and their emotional impact in the context of relationships and chance. She embraces the mystery, the beauty, and the pain together with the unaffected voice and questing soul I look for in a great poet.
Using a variety of tones and modes from simple and conversational to Romantic and elegiac to experimental and abstract, Szymborska has fashioned a little poet-philosopher’s Eden.