New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik says you must read Wislawa Szymborska. He claims the Polish Nobel Prize-winning poet is “as necessary as toast,” and that certainly is not an assertion to be bandied about. (I mean, who doesn’t need toast?!)

Szymborska, who spent most of her life in Krakow and endured both WWII and the lengthy Russian occupation, is not one of those European writers focused on the atrocities of war and the large dark and terrible truths behind them. Instead she writes about the small things, and as Gopnik writes, “makes much of them.” Rather than try to explain what Gopnik means, I’ll instead point you here, to the on-air discussion as well as a poem entitled “A Tale Begun,” which NPR has published on its Web site. Enjoy.