A Study Guide for Wislawa Szymborska's "Possibilities," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.

A Study Guide for Wislawa Szymborska's "Astonishment," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.

A poem by the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, illustrated for readers of all ages that will challenge assumptions about falling in love. They’re both convinced / that a sudden passion joined them. Such certainty is beautiful, / but uncertainty is more beautiful still. Love at First Sight is a poem about love and chance and destiny by the 1996 Polish winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Illustrated by Italian artist Beatrice Gasca Queirazza, Szymborska’s poem comes to life in entirely new ways for her readers and for lovers everywhere in this oversized book perfect for gift giving. Szymborska tells of two young lovers bound together in an instant—or were they? As the poem unfolds, the reader’s assumptions—like those of the lovers themselves—about certainty and destiny are utterly upended, revealing the paradox and mystery of fate. Here is randomness, tricks of memory, and chance, where noticing the smallest details of our intertwined lives is more essential than asking, Are we meant for each other? “Every beginning / is only a sequel, after all…”

Samples the full range of Nobel Prize winning poet Wislawa Szymborska's major themes: the ironies of love, history lessons unlearned, our parochial human perspective, humanity's place in the cosmos, and the illusory character of art. Szymborska's voice emerges as that of a humanitarian graced with a gift for coaxing the extraordinary out of the ordinary in life and language.

Provides one hundred poems including the author's "View with a Grain of Sand," and sixty-four newly-translated selections.

From one of Europe's most prominent and celebrated poets, a collection remarkable for its graceful lyricism. With acute irony tempered by a generous curiosity, Szymborska documents life's improbability as well as its transient beauty to capture the wonder of existence. Preface by Mark Strand. Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh, winners of the PEN Translation Prize.

Szymborska writes with verve about everything from love unremembered to keys mislaid in the grass. The poems will appear, for the first time, side by side with the Polish originals, in a book to delight new and old readers alike.