Wisława Szymborska
Wisława Szymborska, my favorite poet, died today at the age of 88. They cite in full the poem about the cat whose owner has died, which is one of my favorites.
I've already sent the NYT a correction of the pronunciation of her name: it's not VEES-mah-vah, but vees-WAH-vah. The wrong syllable is stressed, but more majorly, they had the wrong consonant.
I liked this part of the obituary:
In her Nobel lecture, Ms. Szymborska joked about the life of poets. Great films can be made of the lives of scientists and artists, she said, but poets offer far less promising material.
“Their work is hopelessly unphotogenic,” she said. “Someone sits at a table or lies on a sofa while staring motionless at a wall or ceiling. Once in a while this person writes down seven lines, only to cross out one of them 15 minutes later, and then another hour passes, during which nothing happens. Who could stand to watch this kind of thing?”
Replace "poet" with "mathematician" and I think her statement is still true.
I've already sent the NYT a correction of the pronunciation of her name: it's not VEES-mah-vah, but vees-WAH-vah. The wrong syllable is stressed, but more majorly, they had the wrong consonant.
I liked this part of the obituary:
In her Nobel lecture, Ms. Szymborska joked about the life of poets. Great films can be made of the lives of scientists and artists, she said, but poets offer far less promising material.
“Their work is hopelessly unphotogenic,” she said. “Someone sits at a table or lies on a sofa while staring motionless at a wall or ceiling. Once in a while this person writes down seven lines, only to cross out one of them 15 minutes later, and then another hour passes, during which nothing happens. Who could stand to watch this kind of thing?”
Replace "poet" with "mathematician" and I think her statement is still true.