SOURCE: Szymborska, Wisława, and Dean E. Murphy. “Creating a Universal Poetry Amid Political Chaos.” Los Angeles Times (13 October 1996): M3.

In the following interview, Murphy questions Szymborska about how and why she writes poetry.

Three weeks ago, poet Wislawa Szymborska left her modest two-room apartment in the southern Polish city of Krakow to escape the noise and confusion of remodeling. She slipped away to this pristine mountain resort, a favorite of Polish artists and writers, and took a small room—no bathroom and no telephone—on the second floor of a clubhouse reserved for authors. Szymborska, a retiring woman with wispy gray hair who cherishes her solitude, passed the days quietly, working on her latest poem. Everything was going according to plan, she says, until Oct. 3, when the world “came crashing down on me.” It was on that day that the Swedish Academy in Stockholm announced that the...