Miracle Fair. Selected Poems of Wisława Szymborska.

First edition. 8vo. Pp. [xii], 159, [5 (blank)]. Black quarter cloth over khaki green paper-covered boards, stamped in silver to spine. Jacket design by Debra Morton Hoyt with cover art by Arkhip Kuinji (priced $24.95 on front flap). Translated from the Polish, with notes, by Joanna Trzeciak (winner of the 2001 Heldt Prize for Translation). Foreword by Czesław Miłosz.

Selection samples the full range of Szymborska's major themes: the ironies of love, history lessons unlearned, the wonders of nature's beauty and bounty, the place of humanity in the cosmos, and the illusory character of art. Awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature "for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality".