There are some nice reviews on the cover. Of these, I prefer the one from the New Yorker, "...ironic elegance miraculously free of bitterness..."
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Note: Poems are read and re-read, but I cannot remember their titles, so I put a mark next to poems in the table of contents if I especially like them. The ratio of marked to unmarked poems is the Mitchell index, and as of this writing, it is 17% for this 1957 - 1993 collection.

Second Note: Of course I don't put a mark by every poem if I like most or all of them, so I realize now that the index is probably worthless. ( )

Master. Szymborska has the kind of control that makes poems seems effortless and inevitable, as if you already knew what she is telling you (though you did not). Her warmth and curiosity thoroughly survive translation (as a monolingual, I can only wonder how strongly her tone rings in Polish). Reading 40 years of work in a single volume, the obvious curves of her life help define and establish the through-line of her perspective (careful, grounded wonder) as she loves, grows, and loses. Very enjoyable and immensely readable. ( )

Szymborska (°1923-2012) is sinds haar Nobelprijs, 1996 een grote naam en afgaande op deze verzamelde gedichten (tot 2002) heeft ze dat ook verdiend, ook al is haar oeuvre niet zo groot. Wat vooral opvalt, is haar thematische veelzijdigheid: er is geen echt thema of genre dat telkens terugkeert; zowel de grote als de kleine dingen van het leven komen in haar vizier. Grote politieke statements moet je bij haar niet verwachten, al neemt ze in één van haar vroege bundels (1957) duidelijk afstand van het communisme. Ook vorm-experimenten zijn aan haar voorbijgegaan, al dragen haar gedichten uit de jaren 70-80 een licht postmodernistische toets. Al bij al is Szymborska dus een vrij conventionele dichteres gebleven, die zich vooral kenmerkt door een subtiele benadering van de dingen des levens, geregeld ook met een portie ironie. Persoonlijk is voor mij haar dichtbundel Grote Pret, uit 1967, het hoogtepunt. En als ik er één gedicht afzonderlijk uit moet halen, “De werkelijkheid eist”, van 1993, waarin ze meesterlijk evoceert hoe ook de meest dramatische voorvallen door de tijd met een laag stof worden bedekt. ( )

Brilliant. You shall be hypnotize with words, with clarity of ideas yet profoundly poetic in nature. Here and there you shall discovered something that you always had a sense about but you just have no capability to put it in words. This collection is a translated edition, with such beauty in this edition, you only can wonder, how much beauty you could get if you can read it in her original language. ( )

A friend of mine asked er mother what she would do differently if she could change her life- and her mother answered that she would like to have read more poetry. This is how we came to discuss poets, and my friend introduced me to Wislawa Szymborska, that I had not been familiar with- a great shame, as I actually studied at the university of Uppsala where all the Nobel prize laureates give their speeches. (and never taking the opportunity to go to them will be my regret I guess)

We ended up reading her poems for about two hours, and I went to get a book of her poems at the nearest possibility and ran home to enjoy.

Apart from her Nobel Lecture, this book contains selected poems from Calling out to Yeti 1957, Salt 1962, No end of fun 1967, Could have 1972, A large Number 1976, The people on the bridge 1986, The end and the beginning 1993 and New Poems 1993-1997.
I am not sure what is missing, but all the poems I remember from our dinner are here.

I am not sure why my friend´s mother wished she had read more poetry, but while I was standing and flicking through the book in the bookshop, I realizes why I will try to read more poetry. In proze, you can "lazy read" and not pay 100% attention all the time- while reading poems, you need to stop and focus - otherwise the meaning will escape you. And this- the stopping and thinking- is so worth it.

And for those of you who, like me, did not know her work, here is a little flavour:

FOUR A.M.
The hour between night and day.
The hour between toss and turn.
The hour of thirty-year-olds.

The hour swept clean for roosters crowing.
The hour when the earth takes back its warm embrace.
The hour of cool drafts from estinguished stars.
The hour of do-we-vanish-too-without-a-trace.

Empty hour.
Hollow. Vain.
Rock bottom of all the other hours.

No one feels fine at four a.m.
If ants feel fine at four a.m.,
we´re happy for the ants. And let five a.m. come
if we´re got to go on living. ( )