The award of the 1996 Nobel Prize for Literature to Wisława Szymborska gives deserved prominence to a figure whose reputation has been relativesly slow to grow beyond her native Poland. A member of the gifted and heroic generation of poets which includes Czesław Miłosz, Tadeusz Różewicz and Zbigniew Herbert, and which, during the years of Soviet oppression, spoke so eloquently for the true feelings of the Polish people, she nonetheless has her own distinctive voice and authority. View with a Grain of Sand is the first selection in English to display not only the broad range but also the essence of her output. Always concerned with the unglamorized actualities of the human condition, often sardonic and very funny, endowed with the most fertile and surprising imagination, Szymborska can now be seen as one of the supremely trustworthy witnesses of our time.
'Wisława Szymborska is not only one of the finest poets living today, but also one of the most readable. In these dazzling new translations, Barańczak and Cavanagh convey the full range of her wit and humour in poems that read as if they were written in English.' - Charles Simic
