Miracle Fair: Selected Poems of Wislawa Szymborska (Paperback)

~ (Author), Joanna Trzeciak (Translator), Czeslaw Milosz (Introduction)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Szymborska has been faithfully translated by the team of Clare Cavanagh and Polish poet Stanislaw Baranczak; their modest and unobtrusive translations have helped to elucidate the work of Szymborska, little known outside Poland before winning the Nobel Prize in 1996. This new collection by professional translator Trzeciak has an entirely different tone, starting with a swaggering preface that declares that several poems here Englished "had been deemed untranslatable" and asserts that the poet's work "is well represented here." Would that this were true. Instead, by sticking to rhyme in English, these versions too often adopt the jog-trot of doggerel, as in "A Man's Household": "...squeezed-out tubes, dried-out glue,/ jars big and small where something already grew,/ an assortment of pebbles, a little anvil, a vise,/ an alarm clock that's already been broken twice..." (The repetition of "already" is typical of the translator's prosy choices.) In less strict forms, the sparer verses of this poet the other Polish Nobel laureate, Czeslaw Milosz, rightly calls in a preface "very grim," read acceptably in English. But far too often, and in particularly sensitive verses, the rhymes are clumsy and banal, as in "Still," about the Holocaust: "Nathan's name bangs his fist on the wall./ Isaac's name sings in a maddened thrall." (A maddened what?, the reader feels like asking.) A couple of these poems reveal a linguistic brightness even in English, like the witty "Rubens' Women," but this handful does not justify a whole collection. (Apr.) Forecast: With a collected (Poems New and Collected 1957-1997) and selected (View with a Grain of Sand) from Cavanagh and Baranczak, Szymborska remains extremely well served. This volume may appeal to completists looking for the few poems found here and not elsewhere.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

Miracle Fair is Szymborska at her very best. -- Harvard Book Review

What Szymborska calls 'the joy of writing' also becomes, in this book, the joy of reading. -- Edward Hirsch

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Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co. (November 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393323854
• ISBN-13: 978-0393323856
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #332,955 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A playful yet powerful poetic voice from Poland, September 29, 2005

By	Michael J. Mazza (Pittsburgh, PA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

This review is from: Miracle Fair: Selected Poems of Wislawa Szymborska (Hardcover)

"Miracle Fair: Selected Poems of Wislawa Szymborska" is translated into English by Joanna Trzeciak, and features a foreword by Czeslaw Milosz. The book also includes a biographical essay on the poet (pages 155-59). The essay notes that she was born in Poland in 1923 and received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996. The essay also describes the challenges she faced as a writer under the communist regime that ruled Poland for decades. Also featured in the book are reproductions of whimsical collages created by Szymborska.

This is a rich and varied collection of poems. I was particularly struck by the author's wit, humor, and often biting satire. At times her work is graced by touches of the surreal or fantastic. Her voice can be both compassionate towards, and sharply critical of, humanity. Overall the book demonstrates her skill at using a variety of writerly techniques: direct address, personification, parallel structures, historical allusion, dialogue, and paradox. In her poetry she draws on the language of mathematics and other disciplines.

I found some of the most striking poems in the collection to be the following. "Commemoration": written in the form a charmingly iconoclastic prayer. "A Man's Household": a gentle and humorous satire of a man devoted to fix-it-yourself projects. "Starvation Camp at Jaslo": a cutting meditation on injustice and suffering that employs biting, grim satire. "The Turn of the Century": uses personification as a technique to look back critically at the 20th century ("Its years are numbered,/ its step unsteady"). "Torture": employs particularly powerful language as she looks at the title phenomenon.

Also worthy of note--"Water": finds a globe-encompassing revelation in a single drop of water. "A Word on Statistics": a cleverly structured, witty satire that leads to a real kicker of an ending. "Pi": a poem about the mathematical concept of the title. "Miracle Fair": a witty and wonderful piece that reminds me of the style and spirit of Pablo Neruda's great work "The Book of Questions." "Poetry Reading": pokes gentle fun at the poetic vocation.

The book as a whole is clearly the work of a skilled and confident master craftsperson who has a real passion to share her vision. Hers is a complex and compelling voice, at times grimly serious, at times playful and childlike. A number of her poems seem to invite the reader to partake of a dramatically altered, even magical perspective--a fresh and even radical new way of looking at the world around us. Her poems on violence and human suffering have a political edge and moral power that remind me of the work of Audre Lorde. And some of her poetry reminds me of Buddhist or Taoist thought--specifically, of teachings on emptiness and nonstriving. At her most luminous, Szymborska strikes me as firmly in the great tradition of poet-prophets exemplified by Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, and other great voices.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful poems on important things, September 21, 2001

By	Eileen Galen (USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Miracle Fair: Selected Poems of Wislawa Szymborska (Hardcover)

Polish Nobel winner Wislawa Szymborska was born in 1923. She's lived through a lot, and she has a highly developed social conscience. She is concerned about ordinary life, love, war, death, and meaning. In poem after beautifully translated poem, she shows her understanding of the things of this world, the mysteriousness of life, and the things that might matter the most.

I reread these poems after the events of September 11th and was astonished to find so much of use to me in thinking about the unthinkable, really. In "A Thank-You Note," she writes "I owe a lot/to those I do not love." In the incredible "Cat in an Empty Apartment" Szymborska takes a cat's point of view, noting "Something here isn't starting/at its usual time./Something here isn't happening as it should./Somebody had been here and had been,/ and then had stubbornly disappeared/and now is stubbornly absent."

Szymborska knows that there are not only unimaginable horrors in the world, but also "miracles," small truths that are awesome and often wonderful - not because of any religious or magical event, but because they remind us, once again, of our humanity and of what good things might be possible. She treasures ordinary life, love, physicality - and communion. Her poems on love (and lovers) are beautiful, and beautifully simple.

She cautions against war in "The End and the Beginning," reminding the reader that "After every war/someone has to clean up./Things won't/straighten themselves up, after all." She wryly and trenchantly describes war's motives in "Hatred." Hatred, she insists, "is not like other feelings," and "gives birth to causes/which rouse it to life."

Szymborska's vision is one worth taking in, reflecting upon, and learning from. Current events aside, Szymborska's a terrific teacher of poetry.

This is a wonderful collection of poems.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars On Szymborska, December 31, 2002

By	Flounder (Substitution Instance) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Miracle Fair: Selected Poems of Wislawa Szymborska (Hardcover)

This is a splendid collection of verse. Szymborska's work is insightful and remarkably deep. This collection has a Forward written by Czeslaw Milosz, who comments that "Szymborska offers a world where one can breathe...."

Miracle Fair begins with "Commemoration" and "Openness," which attempt to situate mortal beings in a natural world full of splendor, mystery, and awesome wonder. This is a lovely collection, which includes "A Dream," "Cat in an Empty Apartment," and "Love At First Sight." There are other moving and poignant poems here, such as "Starvation Camp at Jaslo," and "Turn of the Century."

S's verse is very human in the sense that it reminds us of the smallness of daily existence and the saving grace that can be found in the 'whispering trees.' It also has a vision of historical integration, whereby the ghosts of unfortunate memories speak to us softly.