Wislawa Szymborska
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July 2, 1923- February 1, 2012
Born in Kornik (western Poland)
Won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996
Her poetry reflects on Man “as an individual and
member of human society.”
Her style is “marked by intellectual introspection,
wit, & succinct and stylish choice of words.”
Szymborska’s conventions
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Allusion
Irony
Paradox
Personification
Synecdoche
Apostrophe
Anaphora
Rhyme
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Form
 Enjambment
 Caesura
 Chiasmus
 Asyndeton/
polysyndeton
 Use of “white space”
 Extended metaphor
Works
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Calling Out to Yeti (1957)
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Still
Clochard, Starvation Camp
Near Jaslo, Rubens’
Women, Poetry Reading,
The Tower of Babel,
Synopsis
No End of Fun (1967)
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Soliloquy for Cassandra &
Written in a Hotel
A Large Number (1976)
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Salt (1962)
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The People on the Bridge
(1986)
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Lot’s Wife, On the Banks of
the Styx, Pi
Hitler’s First Photograph &
Into the Ark
Monologue of a Dog
(2005)
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Photograph from
September 11