Volume 45, Number 15 · October 8, 1998
Staring Through the Stitches
By Helen Vendler
Poems New and Collected, 1957-1997
by Wislawa Szymborska, translated by Stanislaw Baranczak, by Clare Cavanagh
Harcourt Brace, 273 pp., $27.00
New Collected Poems
by Tomas Tranströmer, translated by Robin Fulton
Bloodaxe Books Ltd./Dufour Editions, 219 pp., $21.95 (paper)
Two admirable postwar poets, Wislawa Szymborska (born in 1923 in Poland) and Tomas Tranströmer (born in 1931 in Sweden), troubled by what they saw as the moral insufficiencies of both formal religion and Marxist optimism, have sought spiritual understanding outside organized institutions. Of course, few reflective persons who lived through the same period were exempt from such thoughts. But lyric poets, who may be as aware as any novelist of what is happening in society, must condense social questions into personal ones and must transform written language by giving it rhythmic breath and musical cadence. Both Szymborska and Tranströmer are poets of striking brevity: Szymborska questions the conventional movements of thought in our mental and social life, while Tranströmer meditates on the powerful unseen, unconscious forces that underlie our moments of waking awareness. Szymborska was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1996; Tranströmer is frequently, and justly, mentioned as a poet deserving the same prize.
Review, 4146 words
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