The collection also features copies of letters written by the Nobel Prize laureate. Her thirteen poems are arranged in the chronological order of their writing, and some of them may be familiar to readers as they were previously published in literary magazines. Szymborska had signed the contract for the collection before her death, and she authored the selection’s meaningful title herself.
Ryszard Krynicki wrote an afterword for the collection, which also includes Szymborska’s unfinished poems. The actress Anna Polony, who was often praised by the poet for the way she interpreted her works recorded the poet’s last verses in the studio of Radio Kraków. The recordings are aired as part of the Z radiowej biblioteki series and they are scheduled to be released in the form of an audiobook in the autumn of 2012.
Wisława Szymborska kept to an unwritten rule of publishing her works with two Kraków-based publishing houses, Znak and a5 intermittently. Following the poet’s death on the 1st of February, 2012, the two companies both prepared new editions of her works.
Znak’s Jerzy Illg has also declared that a new and expanded edition of Anna Bikont and Joanna Szczęsna’s 2003 interview with Szymborska will be released by his company later on this year. The interview was first published by the Prószyński and Spółka company under the title Wisławy Szymborskiej pamiątkowe rupiecie, przyjaciele i sny (The Souvenir Trinkets, Friends and Dreams of Wisława Szymborska). The Znak edition of the book will have a different layout and design and it will also feature previously unpublished photographs from Szymborska’s personal archive, updating and enriching what will be the poet’s post-mortem biography.
Ktoś, kogo obserwuję od pewnego czasu (Someone I've Been Observing for Some Time) - a poem from the Wystarczy collection, written by Wisława Szymborska in 2010
Someone I've been observing
for some time
He doesn't come collectively.
He doesn't crowd together.
He doesn't take part en masse.
He doesn't revel noisily.
He doesn't call out
as a choir.
He doesn't declare far and wide.
He doesn't speak on behalf.
None of this questioning
in his presence -
who is for, and who is against,
thank you, I can't see.
His head is missing,
where head to head,
where step to step, shoulder to shoulder
and straight to the target,
with flyers in pockets
and a product of hops.
Where only at the beginning
is it bucolic and angelic,
because soon one group
will mix with the other
and it won't be certain
whose are, ah, whose are
these rocks and flowers,
cheers and sticks.
Indistinct.
Unspectacular.
He's employed by the City Sanitation Bureau.
At pale dawn,
from the place where it was happening,
he gathers, takes away, throws into the dumpster,
what is tacked to trees half-living,
what is trampled into the grass.
Ripped banners,
Broken bottles,
Burned effigies,
Gnawed bones,
Rosaries, whistles and condoms.
Once he found a pigeon cage in the bushes.
He took it home
and keeps it
so it can remain empty.
The volume was released by the a5 Publishing House in Poland on the 20th of April 2012.
Poem translated by Agnieszka Le Nart
Wystarczy
Wisława Szymborska
Wydawnictwo a5, Kraków 2012
(the book is released on the 20th of April, 2012)
148 x 210mm, 48 pgs, hardcover
ISBN: 978-83-61298-35-9
Editor: SRS
Source: PAP, wydawnictwo a5, culture.pl