POETRY MONDAY : February 6, 2012
Those of us who love poetry – and I assume that’s all of our readers – must have been saddened by the news that we have lost another luminary. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996, Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska died on February 1 of this year at the age of 88.
There hasn’t been enough time to get permission to re-print her poems or her photo here, but I can recommend a definitive collection of her work. Poems New and Collected 1957-1997, translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh, won the 1996 PEN Translation Prize and was published by Harcourt, Brace & Company in 1998. Because she published so few poems in her lifetime, almost all of them are included in this book, together with a copy of her Nobel Prize Lecture, delivered in Stockholmon December 7, 1996 and filled, as are her poems, with wisdom, truth and self-deprecating humor. It’s a beautiful volume, worth having in your own library, to stand beside the first book of hers any of us ever read, View with a Grain of Sand.
That said, I have a few other recommendations for you this morning. While you’re in the bookstore (and I do hope it’s a real, stand-alone or, as they say, “brick-and-mortar” retail establishment) you might want to pick up or order copies of these recent books by some of our Poetry Monday authors:
The Book of Life: Selected Jewish Poems, 1979-2011 by Alicia Suskin Ostriker (UniversityofPittsburghPress)
Where I Live: New & Selected Poems 1990-2010 by Maxine Kumin (W.W. Norton) and also a book of her essays, The Roots of Things Northwestern University Press)
Two new books by Michael Waters:
Gospel Night (BOA Editions) and Selected Poems (Shoestring Press www.shoestringpress.co.uk)
and finally, one by a psychiatrist-poet whose work we have also featured, Secret Wounds by Richard M. Berlin (BkMk Press) This fine book by a poet not yet widely known, was awarded the John Ciardi Prize for Poetry, selected by poet Gary Young.
Now, I have a request. We always welcome new submissions by regular mail. Please see our guidelines for where to send. But please remember that our readers are interested in good poems of all kinds. Surprisingly – or perhaps not so surprisingly — subject matter least likely to gain acceptance is that dealing with dreams and therapy. So, when you’re deciding about which poems to send, don’t look for those that seem to be of the most psychological interest; all artistic creations are of psychological interest. Just send us your best poems.
Irene Willis,
Poetry Monday