Wisława Szymborska (Polish pronunciation: [vʲisˈwava ʂɨmˈbɔrska],
born July 2, 1923 in Poland) is a Polish poet, essayist, and translator. She
was awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature. Szymborska frequently employs
literary devices such as irony, paradox, contradiction, and understatement, to
illuminate philosophical themes and obsessions. Szymborska's compact poems
often conjure large existential puzzles, touching on issues of ethical import,
and reflecting on the condition of people both as individuals and as members of
human society.
While the Polish history from World War II through Stalinism
clearly informs her poetry, Szymborska was also a deeply personal poet who
explored the large truths that exist in ordinary, everyday things. "Of
course, life crosses politics," Szymborska once said "but my poems
are strictly not political. They are more about people and life."
During her lifetime, Szymborska authored more than fifteen
books of poetry. Her collections available in English include Monologue of a
Dog (Harcourt, 2005); Miracle Fair: Selected Poems of Wislawa Szymborska
(Norton, 2001); Poems, New and Collected, 1957-1997 (Harcourt, 1998); View with
a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems (Harcourt, 1995); People on a Bridge (Forest,
1990); and Sounds, Feelings Thoughts: Seventy Poems (Princeton UP, 1981). She
is also the author of Nonrequired Reading (Harcourt, 2002), a collection of
prose pieces.
Surrounded by friends and relatives, Szymborska died
peacefully of lung cancer in her sleep at home in Kraków in 2012, aged 88.
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