in that it approaches a broad topic with great
philosophical scope and yet treats the serious
subject in an ostensibly lighthearted manner.
Szymborska’s structure, images, and word choice
in this poem contribute to the reader’s impression
that the topic has been explored with intellectual
precision but has remained unresolved.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHYBorn in 1923 in the town of Bnin (now part of
Ko ́rnik) in western Poland, Szymborska and her
family moved to the larger city of Krako ́w when
she was eight years old. During the German
occupation of Poland (1939–1945), Szymborska
attended illegal classes and later, after the war,
studied Polish literature as well as sociology at
Jagiellonian University, in Krako ́w. There she
met the well-known Polish poet Czesl⁄aw Mil⁄osz.
In the years following World War II, Poland
endured a Communist takeover under the Soviet
leader Joseph Stalin, who was attempting to con-
solidate the power of the Soviet Union in Europe.
For a time, poets in Poland faced censorship or
political persecution if their work did not adhere
to the Soviet proscription that literature be used
as a means of state propaganda. Rather than not
be published at all, Szymborska and others chose
to conform to the Soviet demand for ‘‘socialist
realism,’’ in which works by visual and literary
artists were required to exalt Communist social
and political ideals. Szymborska’s early poems
reflect this propagandist goal.
Following a violent uprising by Polish workers
in 1956, the Soviets began to ease the stranglehold
of censorship on Polish writers and artists. Szym-
borska subsequently began to experiment with
forms and styles that were more reflective of her
personal artistic goals and viewpoints. Despite
the absence of an overt renunciation of the work
she did during the socialist realist years, her 1957
poem ‘‘Dwie Mal⁄py Bruegla’’ (‘‘Brueghel’s Two
Monkeys’’) has been viewed as her protest against
the repression experienced under Stalinism. Fol-
lowing the 1995 English publication ofView with
a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems, a collection that
includes translations of a number of Szymbor-
ska’s earlier poems from several volumes and
which was published in Polish a year later as
Widok z ziarnkiem piasku: 102 wiersze (View
with a Grain of Sand: 102 Poems), Szymborska
was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in- ‘‘Some People Like Poetry’’ was originally
published in English translation that same year in
two journals by different translators. Joanna
Trzeciak’s translation was published on October
21, 1996, in theNew Yorker, and Stanisl⁄aw Bar-
an ́czak and Clare Cavanagh’s translation was
published on October 28, 1996, in theNew Repub-
lic.ItwasBaran ́czak and Cavanagh’s translation
that was later published in Szymborska’s 1998
collectionPoems: New and Collected, 1957–1997.
Szymborska continues to live in Krako ́wandto
write poems in Polish, many of which are trans-
lated for American journals and collections. Her
latest collection of poetry in English translation is
Monologue of a Dog, published in 2006.
POEM SUMMARYStanza 1
In each of the unrhymed stanzas of the short
poem ‘‘Some People Like Poetry,’’ Szymborska
explains, qualifies, or explores a section of the
title of the poem. In the first stanza, she discusses
what is meant by the ‘‘some’’ in ‘‘Some People
Like Poetry.’’ She underscores the notion that
the number of people who like poetry is quite
limited, and she discounts appreciation of poetry
that is accomplished in school, where at least a
feigned understanding or enjoyment of poetry
is required of students. Also eliminated from
the equation are poets, who by virtue of their
occupation must appreciate poetry and therefore
should not be counted among the general
population of people who might like poetry. In
the poet’s estimation, the final answer to theWisl⁄awa Szymborska(AP Images)
Some People Like Poetry