Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

The Joy Of Listening: Three Voices In The Poetry Of Wisława Szymborska, Mimi Thompson

CMC Senior Theses

One of the greatest feats that a poet may achieve in his or her lifetime is to develop a voice so characteristic of themself, it would be impossible to confuse it with that of any other poet. Polish-speaking and non-Polish-speaking scholars alike have agreed that the voice of 1996 Nobel Laureate Wisława Szymborska is utterly distinct, despite the fact that her poems explore a wide range of topics and are told from multiple narrative perspectives, rarely featuring herself through any personal details. How, then, is it possible for hundreds of poems, each with their own narrator, to still be “heard” …