appreciated, or found to be valuable in some
manner. The first stanza leads the reader to
refine his or her ideas about how many people
actually like poetry. In this stanza, the poet has
begun posing questions, thus far fairly straight-
forward ones, to the reader. The reader may even
identify him- or herself with the two in every
thousand who may be counted among people
who like poetry. In the second stanza the reader
begins to consider different ways poetry may be
liked, appreciated, or enjoyed, or why one would
keep returning to it. Yet Szymborska’s list of
things that people like urges us to ponder not
only the infinite ways things can be liked but
also how it is that we actually know that we like
them. What, really, do we know of what it means
to ‘‘like,’’ after all? The second stanza forces the
reader along a more complex philosophical path,
although the path does not appear to be so diffi-
cult at first. One might initially contemplate one’s
personal feelings about chicken noodle soup, but
by the end of the stanza, the reader begins to
understand that the very hows and whys of liking
are now topics for examination.
The third stanza is entered into perhaps with
a number of questions still tumbling through the
reader’s mind. Now the reader is being asked to
stop thinking aboutwhywe like poetry orhowwe
like it and to wonder instead about the nature of
the thing itself. In reading the poem, we find
ourselves immediately in a large company of peo-
ple who have wondered the same thing: Szymbor-
ska informs us that a number of answers to the
question of what poetry is have been postulated in
the past. She also hints at the shaky or uncertain
nature of such knowledge, thereby comforting
the reader about his or her own likely lack of
confidence in addressing this vast question. Yet
she goes further than just suggesting that this
question is a challenging one to answer. Szymbor-
ska first asserts, in no uncertain terms, her own
incomprehension on the matter: she emphatically
does not know and will continue to not know
what poetry is. Finally, then, her undercutting
of the steps toward understanding that she has
gradually made in the earlier lines of the poem is
complete. Beyond the assertion that she will keep
not knowing what poetry is, in the last line of the
poem she indicates that she cherishes this igno-
rance as her salvation, thereby emphasizing the
enormous significance of not knowing. The reader
may be left wondering how this utter void of not
knowing can be the only answer Szymborska
offers to the question she has posed. It may seem
initially as though she has simply skirted the issue,
refused to answer the question on grounds that she
also refuses to explain. Readers are left with the
choice of either possibly feeling unsatisfied with
her response and moving on or feeling compelled
to continue to question Szymborska’s apparent
nonanswer.
The poem has ended, and the reader is left to
wonder why it is better to not know what poetry
is than to try and define it. While the poem asks
questions that it apparently avoids answering
with any directness, Szymborska returns to the
very same topic in her 1996 acceptance speech
for the Nobel Prize for Literature. In this speech,
she repeatedly stresses how important ‘‘not
knowing’’ is to a poet. While she mentions none
of her poems specifically, the not-knowing
emphasized by her repetition of the phrase ‘‘I
don’t know’’ in her speech may be directly corre-
lated to the not-knowing she discusses in ‘‘Some
People Like Poetry.’’ Introducing the topic, she
links it to the notion of inspiration, stating,
‘‘Whatever inspiration is, it’s born from a con-
tinuous ‘I don’t know.’’’ She goes on to discuss
the danger of assuming that there is nothing else
to know, nothing else to be curious about:
knowledge will die out if it does not lead to new
questions. Returning to the phrase ‘‘I don’t
know,’’ she attempts to explain her high estima-
tion of it, her view that one’s essential ignorance
should be embraced and cherished. ‘‘It expands
our lives,’’ she states, leads to new discoveries.
Szymborska ties the quest for knowledge
inspired by the phrase ‘‘I don’t know’’ to scientific
discoveries beforeunderscoringthesignificanceof
not-knowing for poets. Poets, she explains, true
poets, must remember how little is known. Every
poem written is an effort by a poet to address the
statement ‘‘I don’t know,’’ Szymborska declares.
Each effort, she goes on to say, is always ques-
tioned as possibly, even probably inadequate,
which is why the poet continues to write poetry.
Thus, not-knowing—the very not-knowing that
blossoms at the end of Szymborska’s ‘‘Some Peo-
ple Like Poetry’’—is the life force of artistic crea-
tion, in Szymborska’s estimation. This is the
redeeming value of the not-knowing that ‘‘Some
People Like Poetry’’ welcomes. The poem answers
the question of ‘‘what is poetry’’ with a very telling
reply. The last two lines of the poem may be para-
phrased as ‘‘I don’t know and I’ll keep on not
knowing, and that’s what saves me.’’Some People Like Poetry