Varied Points of View

One of the strengths of Szymborska's poetry is her ability to write effectively from a variety of points of view. Some volumes of poetry contain a number of poems with very similar themes, diction, structure, etc. To some degree, this is the "style" of the poet, and the reader does not expect a great degree of variance. It is refreshing, however, when a poet makes the effort to write poems from different perspectives. Here's a question: How much should we, the reader, expect a poet to deviate from their standard poetic style? Obviously, every poet develops subjects that they enjoy writing about as well as certain stylistic trademarks. Is the poet better off attempting to develop this trademark style, or should he or she experiment with other techniques? For those of you who have read Kay Ryan, for example: would the aggregate effect of Ryan's poems be lost if all of them were not so terse and laconic?

While Szymborksa writes from a variety of perspectives, the abrupt, direct tone is apparent in all of her work. We talked about translation earlier in the semester, and in light of our observations, I wonder how effective the translators were at transposing the tone of the Polish poems to their English counterparts. Assumablely, the poems were written with simple syntax and clear diction in Polish, but it seems as though it would not always be possible to translate it into English. The tone changes that result from point-of-view changes are often quite subtle, and such subtleties are often apparent in features that distinguish one language from the next.

Here are a couple of examples of her poems with different perspectives.


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I'm a tranquilizer.
I'm effective at home.
I work in the office.
I can take exams
or the witness stand.
I mend broken cups with care.
All you have to do is take me,
let me melt beneath your tongue,
just gulp me
with a glass of water.

I know how to handle misfortune,
how to take bad news.
I can minimize injustice,
lighten up God's absence,
or pick the window's veil that suits your face.
What are you waiting for---
have faith in my chemical compassion.

You're still a young man/woman.
It's not too late to learn how to unwind.
Who said
you have to take it on the chin?

Let me have your abyss.
I'll cushion it with sleep.
You'll thank me for giving you
four paws to fall on.

Sell me your soul.
There are no other takers.

There is no devil anymore.

This is an interesting persona poem; Szymborska does an excellent job creating emotion with something inanimate. The diction and syntax are characteristically simple and clear; this is appropriate, since the tranquilizer is speaking to someone who views taking a tranquilizer as an "easy out." The speaker is not directing thoughts toward someone having difficulty deciding whether or not to use a tranquilizer. The tranquilizer is given god-like abilities and presence; in fact, all of its powers make God's role unnecessary...the tranquilizer can help handle misfortune, take bad news, etc. This comparison is then underscored with the last lines in the second stanza: "What are you waiting for-- / have faith in my chemical compassion." At the end of the poem, the tranquilizer moves from a God-like role to a negative, devil-inspired role: "Sell me your soul. / There are no other takers. / There is no other devil anymore." Szymborska's demonstration of the relationship between religion and items with comparable effect makes the persona believable and interesting--and a more effective poem than one that just describes tranquilizers from the human perspective.

Here's another poem that is not exactly a persona poem, but that has an object speaking.

Falling from the Sky

Magic is dying out, although the heights
still pulse with its vast force. On August nights
you can't be sure what's falling from the sky:
a star? or something else that still belongs on high?
Is making wishes an old-fashioned blunder
if heaven only knows what we are under?
Above our modern heads the dark's still dark,
but can't some twinkle in it explain: "I'm a spark,
I swear, a flash that a comet shook lose
from its tail, just a bit of cosmic rubble;
it's not me falling in tomorrow's news,
that's some other spark nearby, having engine trouble."

This poem is unique syntactically; the first half of the poem is a series of questions. Usually, questions are not a very strong rhetorical device since they tend to lack image and concreteness. These, however, are have rich diction. In the second half of the poem, the star speaks. The fact that the star is speaking is secondary; the imagery ("cosmic rubble") is at the forefront. The idea of the star speaking is reminiscent of twinkle-twinkle-little-star, but the tone is kept lighthearted instead of silly. The poem has an AABBCCDD rhyme scheme, but there is not rhyme in the final four lines; this keeps the rhyme scheme from overwhelming the imagery, as well as distract from the sonic repetition ("comet shook lose"). I still am not sure, however, that this poem would not have been more effective with just a description of the star--is it "speaking" a worthwhile addition?