Some People Like Poetry by Wisława Szymborska
Some People Like Poetry
Wisława SzymborskaSome people—
that is not everybody
Not even the majority but the minority.
Not counting the schools where one must,
and the poets themselves,
there will be perhaps two in a thousand.Like—
but we also like chicken noodle soup,
we like compliments and the color blue,
we like our old scarves,
we like to have our own way,
we like to pet dogs.Poetry—
but what is poetry.
More than one flimsy answer
has been given to that question.
And I don’t know, and don’t know, and I
cling to it as to a life line.
MARGINALIA
I have lists of things I needed to do today. None of which I have paid enough attention to, it seems. Oh well. There’s tomorrow. Today it was just rain, and reading, and soup.
ABOUT WISłAWA SZYMBORSKA
Wisława Szymborska was born on July 2, 1923, in Bnin, a small town in western Poland. Her family moved to Krakow in 1931 where she lived most of her life. She studied Polish literature and sociology at Jagellonian University from 1945 until 1948. During her lifetime, Szymborska authored nearly twenty books of poetry. Her collections available in English include Monologue of a Dog (Harcourt, 2005); Miracle Fair: Selected Poems of Wisława Szymborska (W. W. Norton, 2001); Poems, New… (more)
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ENDNOTES
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