A God Complex: Navigating Point of View and Ars Poetica with Wisława Szymborska

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Getting Started

Poem: "The Joy of Writing" by Wisława Szymborska, translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Barańczak, available online at Narrative

Key Concepts: Poetry, Ars Poetica, Extended Metaphor, Point of View

Level: Adolescents to Adults, Beginner to Advanced

Timing: For educators, this a great exercise to use in a classroom toward the beginning of a poetry class or unit, as it asks students/participants to consider the relationship between the poet and the poem, to unpack what poetry means, and to better understand how point of view can work in a poem. For independently working poets, this exercise might refresh your own relationship to your poems.

Recommended Additional Resources: A Poet's Glossary by Edward Hirsch

Recommended Opening Discussion: "What is a poem?" "What is poetry?" I suggest writing these questions on the board and have students write down their thoughts in 1–2 minutes. They can define a poem by what it is or by what it is not. After they gather their thoughts on paper, write their definitions on the board. Encourage them to challenge each other's definitions with exceptions, and allow them to amend their ideas as the discussion progresses. How do their definitions of "poetry" and "poem" differ? How are they the same? Where are there contradictions in the definitions? Depending on the level of your students/participants, you might then add definitions from poets, including some of those found in this article. In A Poet's Glossary, Edward Hirsch defines poetry as "[a]n inexplicable (though not incomprehensible) event in language; an experience through words."

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Reading Discussion: "The Joy of Writing" by Wisława Szymborska

What can be done in a poem that can't be done in our lives? What power does a poet wield? Those are just a couple of the many questions raised in Polish poet and Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska's poem "The Joy of Writing." Let's read the poem together twice. First, listen to me read it and then one of you should read it aloud.

Situational Questions: "What is the dramatic situation of the poem? That is, what's happening?" "Who's speaking in the poem?"

By answering these questions, we identify the point of view as first person (presumably "the poet") and we realize that this poem takes the form of an ars poetica, which is also an extended metaphor. In A Poet's Glossary, Hirsch begins his definition of ars poetica with a quote:

"Poetry is the subject of the poem," Wallace Stevens declares in "The Man with the Blue Guitar" (1937), and the ars poetica is a poem that takes the art of poetry—its own means of expression—as its explicit subject. It proposes an aesthetic. Self-referential, uniquely conscious of itself as both a performance and treatise, the great ars poetica embodies what it is about. It enacts its subject.

[Optional Addition 1: If you'd like to spend more time on ars poeticas, you could give you students a packet of poems including the definition of ars poetica from the Academy of American Poets "Ars Poetica" by Horace (the first of the form), "Poetry" by Marianne Moore, "Ars Poetica" by Archibald MacLeish, "Poet's work" by Lorine Niedecker, "Poem to Some of My Recent Poems" by James Tate, "Take the I Out" by Sharon Olds, "Ars Poetica #100: I Believe" by Elizabeth Alexander, "Speculations about 'I'" by Toi Derricotte, and "Ars Poetica" by José Olivarez.]

[Optional Addition 2: There are other formal elements of this poem that are worth noting, including stanza size and line length. If you choose to discuss these elements, remember to note that the poem may have undergone some structural changes in its translation. As this is not an exercise in translation but rather an exercise that uses a translation, a thorough discussion of translation theory could derail your class.]

Now that we better understand the poem's point of view and form, let's respond personally to the poem. Reactional Questions: "How did it make you feel?" "What areas of the poem did you like most?" "What ares of the poem stood out to you?"

Writerly Questions: "What is the tone of the poem?" "How does the poet get from the first line, which is a question, to the final line of the poem?" This would be a fabulous opportunity to work through the poem line by line, noticing transitions between sentences, lines, and stanzas. "Why does the word 'written' get repeated so often early on?" "Why is the last stanza in sentence fragments and not complete sentences?"

Final Question: "What is this 'revenge' the 'mortal hand' has?"

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Writing Exercise: A God Complex

With Szymborska's "The Joy of Writing" as an example, write an ars poetica in which you, The Poet (or else an invented character of "The Poet") writes or re-writes a dramatic situation. Perhaps The Poet wants to change a situation over which they had no control in the past or else The Poet is figured like a bored Greek god, reeking havoc in the lives of mortals simply because they have nothing else better to do. The one requirement: The Poet must reveal themself, their powers, and/or their tools in the poem, the way that Szymborska does or the animators in the following Daffy Duck cartoon.