NONREQUIRED READING: Prose Pieces
Wislawa Szymborska, Wisawa Szymborska, Clare Cavanagh, ; trans. from the Polish by Claire Cavanagh. . Harcourt, $24 (256pp) ISBN 978-0-15-100660-1
Szymborska's Nobel Prize for literature in 1996 recognized her achievement in poetry. This collection of short prose responses ("I couldn't write reviews and didn't even want to") to 94 books proves a luminous and inspiring set of readerly reports—sharp, digressive, joyous—that provide insight into the poet's process of intake and synthesis. The pieces don't so much describe the books in question as take off from them, riffing and meditating on their contents. "The world is full of all sorts of sleeping powers—but how can you know in advance which may be safely released and which should be kept under lock at all costs?" she asks after reading Karel Capek's 1936 novel
Reviewed on: 09/23/2002
Genre: Nonfiction