Nonrequired Reading: Prose Pieces

Nonrequired Reading: Prose Pieces

"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 Wislawa Szymborska's poems are admired around the world, and her unsparing vision, tireless wit, and deep sense of humanity are cherished by countless readers. Unknown to most of them, however, Szymborska, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, also worked for several decades as a columnist, reviewing a wide variety of books under the unassuming title "Nonrequired Reading." As readers of her poems would expect, the short prose pieces collected here are anything but ordinary. Reflecting the author's own eclectic tastes and interests, the pretexts for these ruminations range from books on wallpapering, cooking, gardening, and yoga, to more lofty volumes on opera and world literature. Unpretentious yet incisive, these charming pieces are on a par with Szymborska's finest lyrics, tackling the same large and small questions with a wonderful curiosity. Unknown to most Americans until she won the 1996 Nobel Prize in literature, Polish writer Szymborska is primarily a poet. This collection of short prose pieces features book reviews she wrote while working as a columnist. Addressing a wide range of subjects, from the ancient Romans to the modern-day handyman, the reviews reflect her eclectic tastes and poetic sensibility. Unafraid to take an unpopular position, she, as a smoker, complains about the American penchant for demonizing anyone who cannot break the habit. In another piece, she reviews a book on early medical practices, pointing out that Louis XIV must have had an unusually resilient constitution to withstand the 2000 enemas and numerous bloodlettings to which he was subjected. On a weightier note, she tackles the question of why some civilizations succeed while others do not, given that humanity started out more or less the same. The skillful simplicity and lyric quality of these essays make them distinctive. With her poet's gift for compression, Szymborska captures large concepts and brilliantly reduces them to pithy, two-page essays. Strongly recommended for public and academic libraries. --Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. Like many writers who survived the horrors of World War II, and in the case of Eastern European and Russian poets, Stalinism, Nobel laureate Szymborska insists on clarity and directness in her writing, and evinces, too, a ready wit and a wholly personal point of view. Her poetry is treasured the world over, but unbeknownst to most American readers, Szymborska is also a literary columnist, and several decades' worth of her brilliantly arch and pithy essays are deftly translated and gathered in this pleasurable volume in all their vivacious unpredictability and radiant intelligence. Refusing to do the dutiful work of a reviewer or critic, Szymborska freely revels in reading books, which she describes as "the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised." Following her fancy, Szymborska writes with verve and imagination about books on plate tectonics, wallpaper, birds, gladiators, Vermeer, Ella Fitzgerald, hugs, plants, and our "cosmic solitude" as the only planet fizzing with life. Szymborska enters each essay at an oblique and thrillingly subversive angle, and exits with a dazzling flourish, having coolly yet profoundly altered her readers' perceptions. Donna Seaman Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved “Wislawa Szymborska is a philosophically inflected poet who investigates large, unanswerable questions with terrific élan and delicacy.” - Washington Post She teaches us how the world defies and evades the names we give it. And that, too, is something of a miracle. - Edward Hirsch, The New York Times "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 Wislawa Szymborska is not only one of the finest poets living today, but also one of the most readable. - Charles Simic "Glorious distillations of a capacious mind and heart."-- Kirkus Reviews Wislawa Szymborska's poems are admired around the world, and her tireless wit and uncanny sense of humanity are cherished by countless readers. Unknown to most of them, however, Szymborska also worked for several decades as a columnist, reviewing a wide variety of books under the unassuming title "Nonrequired Reading." As readers of her poems would expect, the prose pieces collected here are fresh and unexpected, wise and whimsical. Reflecting the author's own eclectic tastes and interests, the pretexts for these ruminations range from books on gardening, wallpapering, beauty, birds, dogs, and yoga, to more lofty volumes on the love lives of Polish kings, opera, and literature. Unpretentious but incisive, these c