SOURCE: Anders, Jaroslaw. Review of Poems New and Collected, 1957-1997, by Wisława Szymborska. Los Angeles Times Book Review (17 May 1998): 7.

In the following review of Poems New and Collected, 1957-1997, Anders highlights the extraordinary depth and diversity found in Szymborska's complete oeuvre of roughly 200 poems.

Wislawa Szymborska, who received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1996, must be one of the most reticent or most self-discerning poets of today. Of the literary career spanning more than half a century, she is willing to acknowledge only some 200 of her poems collected in eight slender volumes. This sparse body of work, however, displays unusual diversity and polychromy. Szymborska can be simultaneously highly sophisticated, pursuing involved philosophical questions in what she herself calls “essay poems,” yet also be accessible to the extent that some of her poems have been used as lyrics of popular songs. She struggles for the utmost precision of...