Szymborska, Wisława << shihm BAWR skuh, vees WAH vah >> (1923-2012), a Polish poet, won the 1996 Nobel Prize in literature. Her spare, witty verse emphasizes interpersonal relationships and the oddities and unexpected turns of everyday life. She also explored Communist totalitarianism and the threat to individualism in modern mass society. Szymborska was highly popular in Poland, where her verse has even been set to rock music.
Szymborska was born on July 2, 1923, near Poznań. She graduated from Jagiellonian University there and earned a living for several years editing a weekly literary journal. Szymborska described her later poetry as personal rather than political, but her first volume, That’s What We Live For (1952), was heavily influenced by Communism. However, in Calling Out to Yeti (1957), she compared Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to the Abominable Snowman. Her other volumes of poetry include A Hundred Joys (1967), People on a Bridge (1986), View with a Grain of Sand (1995), and Monologue of a Dog (2005). A collection of her prose pieces was published as Nonrequired Reading (2002). Szymborska died on Feb. 1, 2012. Szymborska’s Map: Collected and Last Poems was published in 2015, after her death.
