View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems [Paperback]

Wislawa Szymborska (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 26, 1995

From one of Europe’s most prominent and celebrated poets, a collection remarkable for its graceful lyricism. With acute irony tempered by a generous curiosity, Szymborska documents life’s improbability as well as its transient beauty to capture the wonder of existence. Preface by Mark Strand. Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh, winners of the PEN Translation Prize.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

True, the gentlemen of the Swedish Academy have made more than their share of bloopers. But when they bestowed the Nobel Prize upon Wislawa Szymborska in 1996, they got it right, rescuing a major poet from minor obscurity. Two previous collections of her work had appeared in English, of course. Yet View with a Grain of Sand is by far the best introduction to the Polish writer, conveying not only the fantastic lightness of her touch but the entire worlds she manages to pack into, as it were, a grain of sand. Miniscule wonders are her specialty, such as the tableau she records in "Miracle Fair": "The usual miracle: / invisible dogs barking / in the dead of night. / One of many miracles: / a small and airy cloud / is able to upstage the massive moon." Yet Szymborska is also a love poet of peculiar tartness:

True love. Is it really necessary?
Tact and common sense tell us to pass over it in silence,
like a scandal in Life's highest circles.
Perfectly good children are born without its help.
It couldn't populate the planet in a million years,
it comes along so rarely.

What comes along so rarely, in fact, is a writer of this quality--and a translation that does her justice. Szymborska's brilliance would probably overpower even a second-rate rendering into English. But thanks to the efforts of Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh, she is not only brilliant but supremely readable--an intellectual comedian for whom "there's nothing more debauched than thinking."

Review

The Acrobat
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Allegro Ma Non Troppo
Archaeology
Autotomy
Beheading
Birthday
Bodybuilders' Contest
Born
Brueghel's Two Monkeys
A Byzantine Mosaic
Can In An Empty Apartment
The Century's Decline
Children Of Our Age
The Classic
Clochard
Clothes
Coloratura
Conversation With A Stone
Could Have
Dinosaur Skeleton
Discovery
Elegiac Calculation
The End And The Beginning
Evaluation Of An Unwritten Poem
Experiment
Family Album
Frozen Motion
Funeral
Going Home
Hatred
Hermitage
Hitler's First Photograph
In Broad Daylight
In Praise Of Dreams
In Praise Of Feeling Bad About Yourself
In Praise Of My Sister
Into The Ark
The Joy Of Writing
Landscape
A Large Number
The Letters Of The Dead
Lot's Wife
Love At First Sight
May 16, 1973
Maybe All This
A Medieval Miniature
Miracle Fair
A Moment In Troy
Museum
No End Of Fun
No Title Required
Notes From A Nonexistent Himalayan Expedition
Nothing Twice
Nothing's A Gift
On Death, Without Exaggeration
On The Banks Of The Styx
One Version Of Events
The Onion
An Opinion On The Question Of Pornography
Our Ancestors' Short Lives
A Palaeolithic Fertility Fetish
Parting With A View
The People On The Bridge
Pi
Pieta
Plotting With The Dead
Poetry Reading
Psalm
The Railroad Station
Reality Demands
Retrning Birds
Rubens' Women
Seance
Seen From Above
Sky
Slapstick
Smiles
Soliloquy For Cassandra
The Suicide's Room
A Tale Begun
Tarsier
The Terrorist, He's Watching
Thank-you Note
Theatre Impressions
Thomas Mann
Tortures
The Tower Of Babel
Travel Elegy
True Love
Under One Small Star
An Unexpected Meeting
Utopia
View With A Grain A Sand
Vocabulary
Voices
Warning
Water
We're Extremely Fortunate
Writing A Resume
Copyright© 1998 Roth Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved -- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; 1 edition (May 26, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156002167
• ISBN-13: 978-0156002165
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.6 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #265,695 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars ...How do I love thee? Let me count the ways... August 23, 2000

By "alenchik"

Format:Paperback

Ahh... where do I begin to explain why I admire, adore, and revel in Szymborska's poetry? It all began in roughly 1996-97 when I learned that this Polish poet, previously unbeknown to me, had been awarded the Nobel Prize. While I don't consider the Swedish Academy to be the ultimate authority on good literature and count only several of the previous prize winners among my favorite authors (Solzhenitsyn, Pasternak, O'Neill to name a few), I anticipated that an encounter with her poetry is bound to be special. The brief biographical sketches I then read and her photograph emitted wisdom, modesty, and wit. Or at least that what I think I must have sensed at the moment. In any case, after reading several of Szymborska's poems on-line (at a wonderful site called 'Poems from the Planet Earth') I was irrevocably enamored with her verses. Since then I have read and reread them on occasions too numerous to be counted, and I've read them to friends and strangers.

I find that Szymborska writes with great clarity, never failing to gracefully walk the fine line between excessive (hmm..) eloquence and ascetic laconism. Her metaphors and characterizations are incredibly precise, and her poetry is rich with aphorisms. At the same time, it has somewhat of a haiku-like quality. Whether writing of grand and global matters or of minute things and creatures she is critical yet humane, and -- very genuine. The poems are sharp and witty but never cynical. Simply put, Szymborska's work is sheer brilliance from a poet with love for the human and the inanimate.

I wonder whether the paperback scheduled for release this autumn will contain new poems... On a final note -- all translations I have had the privelege to read (Maguire, Baranczak, Cavanagh) are marvelous -- an occurence that is very unusual, and, hence, very precious.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Another praise, from a younger reader November 30, 2001

By Shu

Format:Paperback

This book was and still is my first poetry book; not because I haven't read anyone else's, but it's the first compilation that I was really willing to pay the often outrageous prices for. (LOL) I am not an avid poetry reader, nor am I familiar with the current favorite contemporary poets, but I find that she really does succinctly portray "life's improbability as well as its transient beauty" quite well.

As a younger reader , I do have a bit of a problem identifying with the poetry that she writes pre-1972 (that is, the first few sections before the 'Could Have' section), because I don't really know much about it. As a note though, I probably should say that 'Nothing Twice,' which is about the probabilities of chance, from the pre-1972 section has been a real gem. Anyhow, the travelogues, the places, the books are things that frankly, I'd ask my parents and they probably wouldn't know either, or know very little about. I suppose if I researched enough, I would have no trouble understanding her message, but the stuff I really bought this book for was the pro-1972 sections. I can identify the issues because they're fairly general knowledge and have a certain mocking humor to some of them, but the words do just pull you in. The poems are addressed to one, and to all, and you feel like you're part of the whole. There are instances in which you feel like she's writing about you and the instances you've gone through, and that's what makes you feel amazed at the depth of understanding she has on these matters.

I first discovered her poetry in my high school English class and was surprised to find this book as the only book available in my favorite bookstore (and costing almost triple the cost of a volume of poetry that must have been 600 pages long, with of course long-dead, long-cherished poets). Oh, wait--I did find another book containing her work (that I don't remember the name of) but I bought this one because there were simply more poems that I liked. After a month or two of muddling around and waiting for the price drop (which it didn't), I just gave up and bought it. I can't say that I've regretted that decision.

And...if you still have trouble deciding, the Nobel Prize for Literature she won should be more than enough of a pull to help you decide. It wasn't as much of a deciding factor for me, but it's always nice to know that somewhere in the depths of the blackhole that is my room, I actually have nobel prize literature that I understand and can recommend to others...

My favorite poems from her have been 'Could Have,' 'The Onion,' 'Discovery,' 'True love,' 'Under One Small Star,' 'Pi,' of course 'View with a grain of Sand' because of wordplay, but I find that every time I re-read it, I uncover more about the poems and so that favorites list keeps on getting longer and longer.

It may sound a little strange, but I keep it with me when I travel for long periods of time away from home and turn to it when I have that rare solitary moment to really think about life and what its inner workings are because it just gives such a realistic criticism that you sort of go...wow. Never really thought about it like that before.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful December 21, 1996

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

For those of you who have never had the taste or temperament for a book of poetry, View With A Grain Of Sand is the book that just might change you forever. These remarkably readable poems by the 1996 winner of the Nobel Prize for Poetry, Wislawa Szymborska, gives the perfect voice to ideas that have been quietly alive within us since we were first able to personalize a thought. Our most grandiose moments - birth, death, love - are placed in a common perspective with words of such simplicity as to make the message even more profound. Indeed, it is the very use of this everyday language that makes these poems so powerful.
Ms. Szymborska eases humanity off its pedestal. The stars, the sun, the passing of time, and even a grain of sand will continue to go on very well without us, and will do quite well, thank you. Is it new when we are told that we are not the center of the universe - not the most important creation? Surely, by now, many of us accept this. What makes these poems so poignant is that they bring this realization to a deeper level.
From the title poem View With A Grain Of Sand,
"We call it a grain of sand,
but it calls itself neither grain nor sand.
It does just fine without a name, ..."
Or, from True Love,
"True love. Is it normal?
is it serious, is it practical?
What does the world get from two people
who exist in a world of their own?"
What makes Ms. Szymborska such a wonderful poet is that her poetry is so enjoyable to read. At first, revelations appear through no great intellectual effort on the part of the reader. They are discovered through the poet's beautiful use of language and our personal identification with her themes. Second and third readings lead to an even deeper personal involvement.
These are poems you want to share with others. This is the greatest praise.