SOURCE: Anders, Jaroslaw. “The Revenge of the Mortal Hand.” New York Review of Books 29, no. 16 (21 October 1982): 47-9.

In the following review, Anders compliments Szymborska's attention to the often overlooked aspects of life in Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts: Seventy Poems, commenting that Szymborska's emphasis on the fleeting nature of memory sets her poetry apart from the works of other notable Polish poets.

Of the poetic voices to come out of Poland after 1945 Wislawa Szymborska's is probably the most elusive as well as the most distinctive. She defies the usual categories (“classicist,” “political”) used to describe writers on the Polish postwar literary scene. Moreover, she is isolated both in her writing and in her life, avoiding autobiography and remaining intensely private.

What is known about her could also, however, be said of many of her generation. Born in 1923 in Kornik, near Poznan, she spent her childhood and early youth in wartime...