In Heraclitus’s River

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012), born in Bnin, Poland, was the author of over fifteen books of poetry and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996. Her Miracle Fair: Selected Poems of Wisława Szymborska was published by W. W. Norton & Co in 2001. She died in February 2012 in Krakow.

Szymborska’s A Large Number was reviewed in AGNI 52 (fall 2000) by Adam Zagajewski.

Stanisław Barańczak (1946–2014) was a Polish poet, literary critic, editor, and translator, as well as, for nearly twenty years until his retirement, a lecturer at Harvard University. He translated, among others, Wislawa Szymborska (with Clare Cavanagh) and Jan Kochanowski (with Seamus Heaney) into English and published more than forty volumes of English poetry in Polish translation.

Clare Cavanagh is a specialist in modern Russian and Polish poetry. She has won numerous awards for her translation of Polish poetry and is currently working on a biography of the poet Czesław Miłosz. (updated 6/2010)