Szymborska's poems have the air of casual observation that turns out to be devastating. She addresses a grain of sand, a cat in an empty apartment, a terrorist's second before the bomb goes off. Her irony is warm rather than cold; her philosophical curiosity is matched by a humor that prevents her work from being merely didactic. Nobel Prize 1996. The most beloved Polish poet of the century after Milosz.

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.