Wislawa Szymborska, Nobel Prize Winner, Dies of Lung Cancer at 88

Szymborska was born in the small Polish village of Bnin in 1923. She moved to Krakow eight years later, where she remained until her death. She was well educated, studying philology and sociology at Krakow's city university. She published her first poem in 1945, entitled "Szukam Slowa," or, in English, "I am "Looking for a Word." It was picked up by a local daily called Dziennick Polski, reported The Guardian.

In 1952, she published her fist collection of poems called "That's What We Live For," while living under Poland's communist government. Her collection was seen an expression of the positives socialism offer. However, he renounced her first two books later in life. In her later writings, she mocked communism.

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Still, she insisted that her poems were never political.

"Of course, life crosses politics," she said in an interview with The New York Times. "But my poems are strictly not political. They are more about people and life."

As she got older, Szymborska stayed away from the public light, despite her popularity. She didn't like the attention and was quoted as saying "there's simply too much fuss about myself."

She had published 200 works when she received the Nobel Prize in 1996, which less than most winners. The committee had lauded her poetry saying, "that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality."

Dr. Clare Cavangh, a professor of literature at Northwestern University, translated much of Szymobrska's works. 

Her poetry "looks at things from an angle you would never think of looking at for yourself in a million years," Cavanagh said, according to the New York Times.

One Szymborska's most famous poems were "Cat in An Empty Apartment," that describes death from the point of view of the person's cat, said Cavanagh.

The New York Times reprinted the poem, which is here:

Die - You can't do that to a cat.

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