Szymborska: Some People Like Poetry

 

Here is one of my favorite poems written by my favorite author of adult poetry:

SOME PEOPLE LIKE POETRY
By Wislawa Szymborska
—Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh.

Some people—
that means not everyone.
Not even most of them, only a few.
Not counting school, where you have to,
and poets themselves,
you might end up with something like two per thousand.

Like—
but then, you can like chicken noodle soup,
or compliments, or the color blue,
your old scarf,
your own way,
petting the dog.

Click here to read the rest of the poem.

Wislawa Szymborska won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996. I found an interesting New York Times article about her poem Some People Like Poetry when two different translations of it were published in The New Yorker and The New Republic back in 1996. The Times posted both translations of the poem's final stanza. I prefer the version that was translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh. It's the version I've read many times in her book Poems New and Collected 1957-1977.

Click here to read the New York Times article.

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Jan has the Poetry Friday Roundup at Book Seed Studio.

Remembering My Mother with Poetry and Pictures

Mary Stella Kozicka Drabik

1918-2017

One year ago today, my beloved mother passed away. It seems like only yesterday that I said goodbye to her. She was loved by everyone who knew her. My mother was a selfless individual who was devoted to her family. I miss her more than words can say.

MOTHER
by Lola Ridge

Your love was like moonlight
turning harsh things to beauty,
so that little wry souls
reflecting each other obliquely
as in cracked mirrors . . .
beheld in your luminous spirit
their own reflection,
transfigured as in a shining stream,
and loved you for what they are not.

Click here to read the rest of the poem.



MOTHER'S DAY
by David Young

      —for my children

I see her doing something simple, paying bills,
or leafing through a magazine or book,
and wish that I could say, and she could hear,

that now I start to understand her love
for all of us, the fullness of it...

Click here to read the end of the poem.

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Remembering my mother with some family photos:

My mother's last Mother's Day (2016)

Here she is with my older granddaughter Julia.

 

A Beautiful Bride!

 

 

 My mother with my older sister

 

 My mother with her parents and her two younger brothers

 

My mother's family

 

 My mother, father, sister, and I

 

 My mother with my sister and me

 

My mother being silly with her cousin Julia and sister Helen

 

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Today's Poetry Friday Roundup is at Reading to the Core.