This time, my wife Claire Akebrand and I celebrate the first half of Wisława Szymborska's collected poems, titled Map. We read a few of our favorites, and talk about "poetic" language vs colloquial language, clarity, humor, irony, punctuation, imagery, how to make your poems appeal to a universal humanity, the importance of not knowing and embracing the unknown, how to push the thinking in your poems farther, and much more. Along the way, Claire reads a Szymborska poem that moves her to tears, and we offer a few Szymborska-inspired writing prompts. 

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