#nonrequired reading

[macrolit]

I'm old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.

Nonrequired Reading, Maria Wislawa Szymborska

[llovelymoonn]

words by wisława szymborska

archeology (tr. clare cavanagh and stanisław barańczak) \\ landscape (1976) \\ the joy of writing (tr. czesław miłosz) \\ view with a grain of sand: "birthday" (1995) \\ map: collected and last poems: "under one small star" (tr. clare cavanagh and stanisław barańczak) \\ poems, new and collected, 1957-1997 \\ view with a grain of sand: selected poems: "tortures" (tr. clare cavanagh and stanisław barańczak) \\ view with a grain of sand: "autotomy" \\ view with a grain of sand: selected poems: "could have" (tr. clare cavanagh and stanisław barańczak) \\ nonrequired reading (1973)

[sentimentalbot]

— Wisława Szymborska, from her essay, “Great Love,” originally published in 1973

[exhaled-spirals]

« A strict personal politics prevails in the world of opera. [...] A soprano must be a bass’s daughter, a baritone’s wife, and a tenor’s lover. A tenor may neither generate an alto nor copulate with a contralto. A baritone lover is a rarity and it’s best if he just settles for a mezzo. And mezzo-sopranos, in turn, should watch out for tenors—fate casts them most often as “the other woman” or in the even sorrier role of the soprano’s best friend. The one bearded woman in the history of opera is a mezzo-soprano and naturally knows no happiness. Apart from fathers, basses ordinarily play cardinals [or] the powers of darkness. No conclusion follows from these comments. I admire opera, which is not real life, and I admire life, which is at times a true opera. » 

— Wisława Szymborska, Nonrequired Reading

[theglasschild]

I'm old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.

Wisława Szymborska, Nonrequired Reading

[chenchenwrites]

So honored & thrilled that a poem of mine was selected for The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2017!! This is especially exciting, knowing that it was a committee of dedicated high school students—working with series editor Daniel Gumbiner and this year’s guest editor Sarah Vowell—that made the selections. Thank you for believing that my work should be “nonrequired reading.” 

What a beautiful thing: reading not for an assignment or to fulfill anything but your own desire to experience delight and to inhabit a different way of seeing. Thanks also to Vowell for the special mention at the end of her introduction! I’m blown away to find myself in the company of Ta-Nehisi Coates, Teju Cole, Kima Jones, my former teacher George Saunders, & others. And thanks to Alex Dimitrov who first published this poem in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series.

[putawaytheglobe]

reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised

Wislawa Szymborska

[sentimentalbot]

Wisława Szymborska, from, “Nonrequired Reading,” originally published in 1973