Monologue of a Dog
From the Philadelphia Inquirer
Posted on Sun, Aug. 06, 2006
Nobel winner Wislawa Szymborska triumphs over contemporary standards, which are simply silly.
Monologue of a Dog
By Wislawa Szymborska
Harcourt. 96 pp. $22
Reviewed by John Timpane
I’ve been reading this book for months, deriving pleasure, instruction, expansion of spirit, and much else from Wislawa Szymborska’s poems.
What most struck me was this: If Szymborska were an American poet and wrote the same poems word-for-word in English, she’d seldom, if ever, get published, and would be harassed and harangued in many a creative-writing class. The way she writes is at odds with many prevalent standards these days. She triumphs over them, utterly. That shows how good she is, and how dumb the standards are.
This Polish poet won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996 at 73; the award struck some people as a surprise, possibly because Szymborska is known for her lightness of touch, her fluttering irony. She takes on important subjects, but with distance, a bemusement that avoids self-indulgence or thought-
wallowing. But hey, she won. She has been a very popular poet for decades (little known in the United States until after the award), regarded as accessible and wise by many readers who don’t consider themselves especially “bookish.”
But you know what? If she sent in Monologue of a Dog as her application to a college or university MFA program, she might not get in. Because, as Billy Collins notes in his introduction, she is a “conceptual” poet. She picks a conceit, a notion, and spins out the poem from there. A poem called “List” is - a list. A poem called “ABC” uses the letters of the alphabet as the poem’s launching pad - with a bouquet of lovely surprises. “A Moment,” “Clouds” - the titles announce the conceit, and away we go. Old-fashioned? Some might say so. Who cares about ‘em?
Some of her poems are nakedly allegorical or metaphorical. “Monologue of a Dog Ensnared in History” sinks us into the inevitability of abuse and violence. Many of her poems are, in the broadest possible sense, “philosophical” - they muse on the nature of life, and tell you they are doing so, no froufrou about it. In fact, the poems in Monologue - ably translated by Clare Cavanaugh and Stanislaw Baranczak - become more and more philosophical as you read on. They muse aloud about what it’s like to exist. They have a point - they tell you so - they make said point - it is packaged for you to take away.
That would not get you points with many editors and teachers these days. Would they ever drive a wooden spike through the heart of that enterprise? They would. Too bad, because, as Szymborska shows again and again in this book, these time-honored ways of spinning poems still sing.
“A Note” starts with the delectable couplet “Life is the only way/ To get covered in leaves,” and, in a string of images (the middles of Szymborska poems often cluster vivid instances, snapshots, encounters, given just enough space to be seen), proceeds to remind us of how single each life is, how only. Life is the only chance you get to “mislay your keys in the grass; / and to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes.” Then, again in a characteristic turn, she leaves with an ambiguous twist: Life is our only chance “to keep on not knowing / something important.” How nice: The frustrations of not-knowing are an opportunity, one for which to be grateful. We can’t have answers to our biggest questions - but in that piquancy somehow lies our big chance.
Szymborska hangs “A Ball” on the repetition of “as long as.” Since, so far, we have no evidence of any other world or life in the universe, we should “act like very special guests of honor / at the district fireman’s ball.” Can you just see the hard-wired reflexes of the creative-writing gatekeepers taking over? Too cute! Cliche! Too obvious! Sentimental! Don’t state this so outright.
They’d be wrong. They might strike out the title of “First Love.” And yet its ending is positively explosive: First love “does what the others still can’t manage: / unremembered, / not even seen in dreams, / it introduces me to death.” Unforgettable.
And, along with the poem “Monologue,” she offers “Some People,” one of the quietest and best of poems on the horrors of 20th-century oppression. Following those who flee oppression, it’s written with a restraint that forces the reader to build in the terror: “Some invisibility would come in handy, / some grayish stoniness, / or, better yet, some nonexistence / for a shorter or longer while.” Some writers whinge on and on about how to write a political poem. Szymborska knows how: Write with a light hand, a passionate heart, and faith in the reader.
Three pillars for a whole culture of poetry! Monologue of a Dog, quizzical and acid-etched, challenges us at every turn. This is poetry that shuts the schools and quiets the critics. Hurrah and again hurrah.
John Timpane is the associate editor of the editorial board for The Inquirer. Contact him at 215-854-4406 or jt@phillynews.com.
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