The New York Times Magazine’s four nominees for Sentence of the Month included Wislawa Szymborska (though, sadly, she didn’t win):
“As far as you’ve come/can’t be undone.” (Wislawa Szymborska, “On Death, Without Exaggeration,” translated by Baranczak & Cavanagh)
Hear the late, great, Nobel Prize-winning Wislawa Szymborska read some of her own poetry at an event in Krakow, Poland, January 2009.
![R.I.P. Wislawa Szymborska
“She teaches us how the world defies and evades the names we give it.”—Edward Hirsch, The New York Times Magazine“[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, The Washington Post Book World](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyqgozVo9z1qdjavvo1_250.gif)
“She teaches us how the world defies and evades the names we give it.”—Edward Hirsch, The New York Times Magazine
“[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, The Washington Post Book World
Congratulations to Clare Cavanagh, who has translated Szymborska’s poetry (among other books), and all the NBCC winners!
Criticism
Clare Cavanagh, Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West(Yale University Press), a deeply scholarly yet lucid study hundred years of poems in three languages from the Northwestern University professor.
About HMH Literature in Translation
