[In the following review, the critic applauds the content and arrangement of Szymborska's poems in Miracle Fair: Selected Poems.]

In this collection [Miracle Fair: Selected Poems], the Nobel Prize winning poet presents an array of poems that date back into the 1950's. While they are culled from more than 40 years of work, Szymborska's preoccupations are consistent over time. In fact, Joanna Treciak who translated the pieces from the Polish, has assembled the pieces according to theme and not chronology and that proves to be the strength of this particular volume. Although the pieces are consistently bleak, with poems about hatred and the nearly absurd contingency of violence and violence of contingency, Szymborska's treatment is refreshing and insightful. Her power is in her ability to concentrate our collective gaze on the minutest of paradoxes—but always in relation to human issues: language, representation, power, emotion and consciousness. Her poetry succeeds in reducing the ego, in showing humanity as a part of a larger universe witnessed even in the tiniest of things. At 192 total pages including notes, a brief biography and a foreword by Czeslaw Milosz, and only 116 pages of poems this is a slim volume, truly a “selection.” Still, what's here hangs together very well, exhibits Szymborska in all her power and provides valuable context. It would, in fact, be a great book to familiarize yourself with the Polish poet, a wonderful place to start.