Words to the Wise: Wislawa Szymborska
Poets, if they're genuine, must keep repeating "I don't know." Each poem marks an effort to answer this statement, but as soon as the final period hits the page, the poet begins to hesitate, starts to realize that this particular answer was pure makeshift that's absolutely inadequate to boot. So the poets keep on trying, and sooner or later the consecutive results of their self-dissatisfaction are clipped together with a giant paperclip by literary historians and called their oeuvre.
-Wislawa Szymborska
posted by Mendi Obadike at 1:35 PM
3 Comments:
Thanks for this! As if I needed more evidence of Szymborska's genius. That constant attempt to 'get it right' keeps us returning to the page over and over again
Yeah, Szymbosrska's the one. I'm compelled by the fact that this quote is all about failure, of a sorts, and yet it inspires me. Maybe it comforts me, because I understand more deeply that the sense of not knowing I sometimes get when I've "finished" a poem is not "doubt", but rather something that shines a light further down the path.
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