Hi! I think it would be cool if we read a poem by Wislawa Szymborska for class on Thursday. She was from Poland and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996. I read some of her poems in high school, and a few that I really liked were “The Silence of Plants” and “Snapshot of a Crowd.” Similarly to some of the poems we’ve read that help us think about the difference between humans and other animals, “The Silence of Plants” questions the relationship between humans and plants. I also really like “Snapshot of a Crowd” because it deals with human insignificance, and identity and just makes me think. This poem also is sort of ekphrastic, if we think of the picture she writes about as a work of art. Both poems also get at the issues involved in translation as both have been translated to English. It is always interesting to think about the art of translation, and how translation may change the message of the poem.
Here are links to both poems!
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/wisaawa-szymborska
