Monday, February 06, 2012

Nobel winner left behind new poems

A new book of poems by Nobel Prize winner Wislawa Szymborska, who died at the age of 88, will be published in 2012.

Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska pictured in 2009 in Krakow. Szymborska died on Feburary 2, 2012 at the age of 88 following a long battle with illness.
Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska pictured in 2009 in Krakow. Szymborska died on Feburary 2, 2012 at the age of 88 following a long battle with illness. Photo: AFP

A new book of poems by Nobel Prize winner Wislawa Szymborska, who died at the age of 88 on 1 February, will be published this year.
Szymborska published her last book, Here, in 2008, but she had been working on a collection of poems that an associate said will be published in a book this year.
When the Poznan-born writer was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1996 - only the fourth ever Polish winner - she was described by the Nobel committee as "the Mozart of poetry".
Among her admirers was Woody Allen, who said: "She is able to capture the pointlessness and sadness of life, but somehow still be affirmative." The filmmaker made the remark in a 2010 documentary called Sometimes Life Is Bearable, the title taken from a comment the poet had made.
As well as being a brilliantly humourous and mordant poet, she was also personally courageous. After the Nazis invaded Poland in September 1939 - when she was 16 - she found work as a railway clerk to avoid deportation to Germany. In her free time, she studied at illegal underground universities.
She used her poems to mock the mighty. One work in 1957, Calling out to the Yeti, compared Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to the abominable snowman.
Szymborska was always a heavy smoker and died of lung cancer after a long career in which she wrote 400 poems and published about 20 volumes. It's good to know that there will be more still to enjoy of the sort of poetry that the Swedish Academy said evinced the creative ease of a Mozart and the fury of a Beethoven

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