Books by Wislawa Szymborska

A poem by the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, illustrated for readers of all ages that will challenge assumptions about falling in love.They're both convinced / that a sudden passion joined them.Such certainty is beautiful, / but uncertainty is more beautiful still. Love at First Sight is a beautiful poem about love and chance and destiny by the 1996 Polish winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Illustrated by Italian artist Beatrice Gasca Queirazza, Szymborska's poem comes to life in entirely new ways for her readers and for lovers everywhere in this oversized book perfect for gift giving. Szymborska tells of two young lovers bound together in an instant-or were they? As the poem unfolds, the reader's assumptions-like those of the lovers themselves-about certainty and destiny are utterly upended, revealing the paradox and mystery of fate. Here is randomness, tricks of memory, and chance, where noticing the smallest details of our intertwined lives is more essential than asking, Are we meant for each other? "Every beginning / is only a sequel, after all…"

In this witty "how-to" guide, Wislawa Szymborska has nothing but sympathy for the labors of would-be writers generally: "I myself started out with rotten poetry and stories," she confesses in this collection of pieces culled from the advice she gave-anonymously-for many years in the well-known Polish journal Literary Life.      She returns time and again to the mundane business of writing poetry properly, that is to say, painstakingly and sparingly. "I sigh to be a poet," Miss A. P. from Bialogard exclaims. "I groan to be an editor," Szymborska responds.      Szymborska stubbornly insists on poetry's "prosaic side": "Let's take the wings off and try writing on foot, shall we?" This delightful compilation, translated by the peerless Clare Cavanagh, will delight readers and writers alike.       Perhaps you could learn to love in prose.

Nobel Prize winner Wislawa Szymborska draws us in with her unexpected, unassuming humour. Her elegant, precise poems pose questions we never thought to ask. Carefully edited by her long time, award winning translator, Clare Cavanagh, the poems in Map trace Szymborska's work until her death in 2012.

Features seventy poems that are among the largest and most representative offering of Wislawa Szymborska's work with particular emphasis on the period since 1967. Describing Szymborka's poetry, this book shows that her verse is marked by high seriousness, delightful inventiveness, a prodigal imagination, and enormous technical skill.

This collection of Szymborska's work reveals her to be concerned with the unglamorized actualities of the human condition. She is one of a generation of Polish poets which witnessed the years of Soviet oppression and spoke for the feelings of the Polish people.