{"id":50733,"date":"2022-04-14T09:53:03","date_gmt":"2022-04-14T13:53:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/?p=50733"},"modified":"2022-04-14T09:53:06","modified_gmt":"2022-04-14T13:53:06","slug":"speaking-of-poets-szymborska-had-something-to-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2022\/04\/speaking-of-poets-szymborska-had-something-to-say.html","title":{"rendered":"Speaking of Poets<\/em><\/font>
Szymborska Had Something to Say<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a>
Wislawa Szymborska<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

“Contemporary poets are skeptical and suspicious even, or perhaps especially, about themselves. They publicly confess to being poets only reluctantly, as if they were a little ashamed of it. But in our clamorous times it\u2019s much easier to acknowledge your faults, at least if they\u2019re attractively packaged, than to recognize your own merits, since these are hidden deeper and you never quite believe in them yourself … When filling in questionnaires or chatting with strangers, that is, when they can\u2019t avoid revealing their profession, poets prefer to use the general term \u201cwriter\u201d or replace \u201cpoet\u201d with the name of whatever job they do in addition to writing. Bureaucrats and bus passengers respond with a touch of incredulity and alarm when they find out that they\u2019re dealing with a poet. I suppose philosophers may meet with a similar reaction. Still, they\u2019re in a better position, since as often as not they can embellish their calling with some kind of scholarly title. Professor of philosophy \u2014 now that sounds much more respectable.”  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

from Szymborska’s 1996 Nobel Prize lecture<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘Contemporary poets are skeptical and suspicious even, or perhaps especially, about themselves. They publicly confess to being poets only reluctantly, as if they were a little ashamed of it. But in our clamorous times it\u2019s much easier to acknowledge your faults, at least if they\u2019re attractively packaged, than to recognize your own merits, since these are hidden deeper and you never quite believe in them yourself…’ – Nobel Prize Laureate Wislawa Szymborska<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":50737,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,4,23,17],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-50733","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-literature","8":"category-main","9":"category-news","10":"category-political-culture","11":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/wislawa-szymborsk.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-dch","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50733"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50775,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50733\/revisions\/50775"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}