Zbigniew Herbert, poet

The poems of Zbigniew Herbert, a Pole, may be likened to a woman in a wheelchair who smokes a cigarette at the airport while waiting for a ride.

They don't look like they should look or read like they might read and, considering when they were written (1956-1998), are curiously diffident while being stubbornly committed to their freedom.

It couldn't have been easy for Herbert to have been a poet; it must have been very difficult in a Communist country where the whole notion of individual liberty was at odds with the state, like a woman trying to find a place to smoke a cigarette in peace in a public space.