An outstanding poet and translator of the second Nyugat generation, Szabó studied in Debrecen and Budapest and published his first book of poetry Earth, Forest, God [Föld, erdô, Isten] in 1922. He was heavily influenced by the German poet Stefan George (1868-1933) whose right hand in plaster form was kept by Szabó on his desk as a relic. After a revolutionary "Sturm und Drang" period of anarchistic revolt against the money- making ethics of society, Szabó made his 'Private truce' with reality, turning to philosophy and other less topical subjects. In 1944 he won the Baumgarten Prize, in 1954 he was given the Attila József Prize and in 1957 the Kossuth Prize.

Szabó's literary style shows a unique blend of intellectual perception and sensual experience. Few poets lived as passionately in the present as he did. Cricket Music [Tücsökzene], in which he told the story of his life in a brilliant sequence of poems, appeared shortly after World War II, in 1947. He devoted a major lyrical requiem to his dead lover in the volume entitled The Twenty-sixth Year [A huszonhatodik év], which appeared in 1957, shortly after his death and contained 120 sonnets. He developed the rhyming technique of the Hungarian language to an unprecedented degree; assonances and enjambments of a highly sophisticated nature became Szabó's personal trademark and signature.