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No reader, not even poetry-phobes, should miss the bright revelations of Nobel laureate Szymborska. -- Booklist Szymborska's poetry had the gift of creating both the happiness of wisdom felt and the ecstatic happiness of the particulars of life fully imagined. From the experience of armies and dogmas and death that shaped her early life, she found a new commitment to the belief that the poetic impulse, however small its objects, is always saner than the polemical imperative, however passionate its certitudes. -- Adam Gopnik - The New Yorker Wit, wisdom and warmth are equally important ingredients in the mixture of qualities that makes her so unusual and every poem of hers so unforgettable. We love her poetry because we instinctively feel that its author genuinely (though by no means uncritically) loves us. -- Stanislaw Baranczak - New York Times More than any poet I can think of, Szymborska not only wants to create a poetic state in her readers, but also to tell them things they didn't know before or never got around to thinking about. -- Charles Simic Szymborska's skepticism, her merry, mischievous irreverence and her thirst for the surprise of fresh perception make her the enemy of all tyrannical certainties. Hers is the best of the Western mind - free, restless, questioning, in every way the opposite -- New York Times Book Review Glorious distillations of a capacious mind and heart. -- Kirkus

No reader, not even poetry-phobes, should miss the bright revelations of Nobel laureate Szymborska. -- Booklist Szymborska's poetry had the gift of creating both the happiness of wisdom felt and the ecstatic happiness of the particulars of life fully imagined. From the experience of armies and dogmas and death that shaped her early life, she found a new commitment to the belief that the poetic impulse, however small its objects, is always saner than the polemical imperative, however passionate its certitudes. -- Adam Gopnik - The New Yorker Wit, wisdom and warmth are equally important ingredients in the mixture of qualities that makes her so unusual and every poem of hers so unforgettable. We love her poetry because we instinctively feel that its author genuinely (though by no means uncritically) loves us. -- Stanislaw Baranczak - New York Times More than any poet I can think of, Szymborska not only wants to create a poetic state in her readers, but also to tell them things they didn't know before or never got around to thinking about. -- Charles Simic Szymborska's skepticism, her merry, mischievous irreverence and her thirst for the surprise of fresh perception make her the enemy of all tyrannical certainties. Hers is the best of the Western mind - free, restless, questioning, in every way the opposite -- New York Times Book Review Glorious distillations of a capacious mind and heart. -- Kirkus A delightful collection of literary ephemera. -- Publishers Weekly Her responses may seem harsh, but her criticisms are veiled insights, and her insights unveil depths. -- Minor Literatures Endlessly witty. -- Paula Erizanu - Calvert Journal Szymborska's assessments are refreshing to anyone who has gone through a writer's education at American colleges and universities. -- Josh Christensen - First Things

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Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Wislawa Szymborska, “is unquestionably one of the great living European poets. She's accessible and deeply human and a joy—though it is a dark kind of joy—to read. She is a poet to live with"" (Robert Hass). Winner of the NBCC in criticism, Clare Cavanagh is the Frances Hooper Professor of Arts and Humanities at Northwestern University. Her translations include Wislawa Szymborska’s Map: Collected and Last Poems, with Stanislaw Baranczak, and Adam Zagajewski’s Slight Exaggeration.

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