Yesterday Polish poet Wisława Szymborska died (you can read the obituary here). I bought my first letterpress to print several of her poems and last night I re-read some of her poetry. (I think the best translation into English is this one.)
My current favorite is A Word on Statistics, which starts out
Out of every hundred people,
those who always know better:
fifty-two.
Unsure of every step:
almost all the rest.
Ready to help,
if it doesn’t take long:
forty-nine.
Read the entire poem here.
Did the Times’ obituary strike you as weird, lacking in feeling?
I got the sense that the obit begrudged Szymborska her preference for privacy, her reticence. And it seemed to me that that whiff of disapproval colored the Times’ appreciation of her poetry.
I love her poems—so quietly quirky, marked by humor and word play (despite the difficulties of translation).
Oh I loved this poem!! Thanks for it—
Also, I think Cathy may be right, very astute observation—