Czeslaw Milosz Books

Every poet should read this seminal work. And if you're not a poet, you should read "A Treatise" to understand poetry, learn history and tune into your inner self. It is a reading experience and a textual event that should not be missed.Milosz has written one of the great poems of our century. It is a shame that it took half a century to get the full English translation out, which corrects a serious deficit in the cultural terms of trade between Poland and the English-speaking world. It is as if Shakespeare's Hamlet or Othello has only just been translated into Polish. If you're familiar with "The Wasteland" of TS Eliot, you will compare "A Treatise on Poetry" very favourably to to the 1922 modernist classic. Indeed, it is an improvement on Eliot's masterpiece in four crucial respects. First, "A Treatise" maintains an overall structure and form that the amorphous "Wasteland" lacks. The English translation may not have retained the metrical structure of the original, but conveys the sense of form Milosz carefully constructed to carry his theme. Second, although the poem manipulates myth and symbols to register the brutal truths of our century, it does not shy from recording historical events or capturing the drama of individual lives. Despite its wide historical canvas, stories of our innermost being are told and you will enter the skin of real lives long consigned to dust. Third, the poem addresses you at several levels. Its tone ranges from the bright, breezy and hopeful to the elegaic and tragic and downshifts to a deep and quiet understanding. The modulations in mood and voice are exceptionally rendered, making the reading of the poem an experience in itself. Fourth, "A Treatise on Poetry" lives up to its title without ever being ponderous, technical or trite. Reading the detailed notes to illuminate the symbolic shorthand of the verse enhances your reading experience. With an intimate understanding of Polish poetry, its pracititioners and their interaction with the driving forces of the first half-century, Milosz offers a compelling portrait of poetry's potential, its limitations, and its reach. You will come away despairing of humanity, but sanguine about the value and use of poetry. In conclusion, Milosz has written a great work of art that defies easy paraphrase, facile criticism or quick comparisions. It must simply be experienced. I am quite confident that it will be considered one of the greatest poems of our century in the years ahead.

This long and complex poem poses the explicit against the inexplicit, the aesthetic against the historical, nature against culture and history, history against freedom and human aspiration. The preface prescribes a simple enough formula for poetry: plain language "in the mother tongue," images, rhythm, dreaminess. But it notes that poetry written to this formula "was bypassed by the dry sharp world." That world is Poland of the first half of the twentieth century. The problem posed by this treatise is how poetry can account for reality, specifically the reality of history, and still function aesthetically. The problem occurs not because an allegiance to history is an adequate response to human difficulties-individual memory, freedom, and universal aesthetic ideals are superior to it-but because history represents a necessity that must be adequately acknowledged. The simple answer is that poetry must include the actual world, and not settle for merely recording emotions, as some of the poets of Milosz's youth did. But this is more easily said than done. Talented poets, many of them named in the Treatise, have failed to find adequate ways of accounting for historical reality. Negotiating between aesthetic idealism and coruscating rationalism, uniting "Freedom and Necessity," is the task Milosz sets for himself. The poem is divided into four parts, plus the brief preface. "Beautiful Times," the first section, depicts Krakow, the seat of polish culture, around 1900. The second section, "The Capital," set in Warsaw, assesses poet by poet the state of Polish poetry before the Second World War, and criticizes its inability to account for the massive rush of history that was about to occur. The third and most powerful section, "The Spirit of History," depicts through scenes of the Occupation in Poland the terrible consequence of Nazi and Polish idealism. Both represent the failure of history, culture, and language to form coherent and realistic world-views: Nazi idealism undermined by inhuman brutality, Polish idealism betrayed by incoherent and outdated romanticism. The last section, set in Pennsylvania, considers America as an escape from history and culture into nature, which Milosz finds "hostile to art," and examines the implications for a poet of being in such a place (he would soon return to Europe) after the great failure of poetry and culture embodied in the war.

Czeslaw Milosz was one of the great poetic voices of the twentieth- century. Courageous as a dissident he was too courageous as a poet. His Poetry seems to come from another world in which what matters is not personal confession but rather perception of reality in all its levels of complexity. Milosz's truth-telling is combined with a fantastic ability to incorporate contradictory and sometimes parallel- realities in the same poem. His life can be seen as divided into two great periods, the Lithuanian - Polish- European period in which he was a public servant and diplomat, and the later years in exile in the United States where he taught at Stanford. One remarkable element is his capacity to sustain writing of quality over so many years.
He is a writer who makes us see the world from afar, and close- up at once, and provides with a vast richness of perceptions and sensations. His life and work too reveal a great loyalty to friends and decency in relation to the suffering of peoples other than his own.

This volume became the standard text of Polish literary history in English when first published in 1984 because it was the only modern one and written by the leading western expert on the topic. I used it in a Polish literary history survey course and compared it with the standard Polish texts of that era of less than free expression in Poland. While necessarily not as encyclopedic as the books from Warsaw or Krakow, it covered the highlights, and there are many of them, of the entire sweep of the topic, including a section on himself. It is still the standard in English. There may be something from the new Poland that supersedes it, but I don't know. It is vital for understanding the rich tradition of literature in Polish that has always been treated on the margins of world literature. For example, it helps to put Chopin's Ballades into perspective and enrich one's understanding of his intellectual milieu before he left Warsaw to join the Polish emigration--and Milosz covers that as well. Buy it.

There are particular paths in the field of intellectual history that are so famous, after years of study, anyone is likely to expect certain names to appear in a certain order. For those familiar with the work of William Blake, Czeslaw Milosz's title THE LAND OF ULRO suggests an explanation of a particular vision in some obscure prophetic and poetic work. A scholarly approach would include an index in which all the pages mentioning Ulro could be identified and checked sequentially or by particular topics to clarify how Ulro is understood in this book. But actually, Czeslaw Milosz is a poet, winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize for Literature, who summed up the twentieth century in a book called ROAD-SIDE DOG (1998) by remembering a slow trip by two-horse wagon. "And always we were barked at by a dog, assiduous in its duty. That was the beginning of the century; this is its end." (NEW AND COLLECTED POEMS (1931-2001), p. 645).

Rather than being an intellectual history, this is more like a memoir of intellectual roots that was written in Polish (ZIEMIA ULRO) in 1977, and a Preface in English by Czeslaw Milosz dated 1984 apologizes for "too many allusions to poets and critics unavailable in English translation." (p. vi). The translator Louis Iribarne provides notes on pages 277-287 for many of the names in the text, and seems particularly knowledgeable about Witold Gombrowicz (1904-69) on pages 277-278 and characters from his novel FERDYDURKE Professor Pimko and Miss Youthful on page 279. The poet Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855) has a ballad "The Romantic" on pages 97-99, translated into English by W. H. Auden. Considered "The first in Polish literature to bear the title of a *wieszcz*--a vatic bard endowed with the properties of a charismatic national leader" (p. 282) Mickiewicz is also explained with reference to his major works, including a play in which "its poet-hero Gustav [is] reborn as the rebel Konrad." (p. 283). People who have already read FERDYDURKE as a comic romp on the Polish pride in Polish poets might approach THE LAND OF ULRO as a more serious contemplation of the same theme by someone who deserves the respect that comedy lacks.

Gombrowicz and Czeslaw Milosz were both educated in law before achieving fame as authors who spent much of their lives in the West. THE LAND OF ULRO attempts to explain how the study of literature is so much like a dog chasing its own tale that legal studies seem closer to reality. The ultimate state of our culture is suggested by the reflection in this book on seeing a photograph of Albert Einstein on the wall of a restaurant.

"I stared up at the face, recalling how moved, how humbly respectful I had been, when many years ago I had made his acquaintance at Princeton. To me he was not only a scientist; he had stepped quite suddenly from the pages of ARS MAGNA and LES ARCANES." (p. 226).

That observation is from the end of section 35 of this book. Section 31 begins with the observation, "In 1924 a small book by Oscar Milosz was published in Paris under the Latin title ARS MAGNA. It consisted of five chapters or, as he called them, `metaphysical poems,' the first of which was written in 1916. LES ARCANES, written in 1926 and published in 1927, is both a sequel to and an expanded version of the first book." (p. 187). "Both make fiercely difficult reading, exasperating . . ." (p. 188). Section 16 began with the identification of "my distant cousin, Oscar Wladyslaw Milosz, who wrote under the name of O. V. de L. Milosz." (p. 61). Skipping over section 34, I noticed a mention of Milton that I had long expected to find during the book's many references to William Blake:

"The rebellion of the angels, which begot the power of evil, was, in effect, a catastrophe affecting the whole of creation, even if it did not produce another, equally powerful extreme opposed to good. The first catastrophe is closely related to the second, the sin of our parents. In Dante's DIVINE COMEDY the earth's center is occupied by the fallen (literally, headlong from heaven) angel, Satan. Milton's PARADISE LOST treats the rebellion of angels as a cosmic catastrophe. William Blake, though poetically indebted to Milton, `corrects' him by exonerating Satan, because, said Blake, he rebelled against a false God, the autocratic Jehovah. For Blake, as I have said, the catastrophe occurred with the breakup of the unity of the human-divine family." (pp. 214-215).

Section 26 begins with, "To speak of Swedenborg is to violate a Polish taboo that prohibits writers from taking a serious interest in religion." (p. 135). For one thing, his books were in Latin. "But a reading public of enlightened, philosophically minded ladies and salon wits, either ignorant of Latin or deficient in it, now had to be addressed in the new international language of French." (p. 141). Near the end of section 26, summarizing his visionary style, "The tension between Swedenborg's pedestrian style, stripped of poetic fancy, and the substance of his message conceals a richness difficult to name, before which we stand as before Escher's geometric drawings exploiting the paradoxes of three-dimensional space. Despite the cloying repetitiveness and manifold tautologies, Swedenborg makes profitable reading, even if one is in no way moved to become a Swedenborgian." (p. 147). Section 28 reveals, "Blake was born in 1757--the year of the Last Judgment, according to Swedenborg--and the significance of his birth date was not lost on him." (p. 158). Blake's THE BOOK OF THEL (1789) is like:

He who has never tasted bitterness
Will never taste sweetness in heaven. (p. 163).

Blake's great poem "Milton" is quoted on pages 172-174, compared to a Swedenborgian maxim, and quoted again on pages 179-180, without specifically mentioning the poet Milton, except as Northrup Frye binds "when Blake and Milton elaborate theories of history" (FEARFUL SYMMETRY, p. 195) (Milosz, p. 182).

An extraordinary collection of work by an extraordinary man. Milosz inhabits a world almost competely removed from that of most modern readers. A Lithuanian by choice and descent (explained in the introductions to the book) Milosz worked for the Lithuanian legation to the League of Nations during the crisis over Vilnius (Poland occupied it) concurrently generating major works of poetry. A small review cannot do justice to the poet, nor to the soul of a great man. It's amazing how fresh his speculations are even today, although he died shortly before WWII. He seems to have been a real modern day prophet. He predicted WWII, he predicted the disappearnce of Lithuania, and then her wholesale reemergence into the fresh air after a period of great tribulation and suffering. The reader should compare his comments here in this book to the actual situation in the EU today. His characterization of Bolshevism here also deserves attention.

Besides being intimately involved with the events of his and our day, Milosz was also a student of eastern languages and wisdom. He knew the Bible in Hebrew. He was as concerned it seems with his Semitic roots as with his aristocratic Baltic roots and the reader will recognize some of that influence in his poetry and writing.

The book itself is divided into several sectons. The first ( although actually the various introductions constitute a section unto themselves) is his verse in French and English translation. Later come his dialogues or plays I guess. His super-mystical writing if I remember is in the Great Arcana, or Ars Magna. His commentary in the back is as rich as his work towards the middle of the book.

Some may be surprised to learn he was the mentor and second uncle of the Nobel prize-winning Polish writer Czeslaw Milosz. The younger Milosz's perspective on Polish politics is markedly gentler to the Polish side, an accident of birth on the wrong side of the river it seems. Czeslaw Milosz's introduction to this book is quite interesting also.

The geneology of the family of Oskaras Milasius (the Lithuanian variant of his name) coud fill a book itself, with the crest bestowed by Mazovian royalty "Bozawiola" (not a stop on the Warsaw train system, it means Will of God), the ancient Wendish ancestors from Lusatia, etc. All of it is rustic and perhaps hard for Americans to conceptualize, which is just exactly why they should read this book. English and other peoples may like it as well.

PROVINCES finds Polish Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz confronting the quandaries of old age. Milosz has always been a philosophical poet, and he is so in these poems--but often here his philosophizing turns to the topic of philosophy's failures. In poems such as "Conversation with Jeanne" and "December 1," he tells us that the philosophical and theological arguments that impressed him when he was younger do so no longer. Indeed, several poems, such as "Blacksmith Shop" and "In Common," abandon abstract contemplation in favor of celebrating the physical world. This concern with things for their own sake is also embodied in his poem "Linnaeus," which offers a tribute to the inventor of modern taxonomy.

As W.B. Yeats does in his late poems, Milosz writes from the perspective of being a widely admired poet grown old. These poems dramatize his internal conflicts, including his doubts about his life's work: he refers to himself in the first, second, and third persons, and some poems openly take the form of internal conversations. These are powerful poems of old age, as often self-ironizing as self-elegizing.

Reading translated poetry can be a matter of making allowances, but that's not the case here: Milosz's collaboration with translator Robert Hass results in memorable English renderings of the Polish originals.

What I love most about reading modern poetry is the open friendliness of the poets. I usually have two or three books in the works and picking them up and reading them is like sitting down with the poets in my kitchen and having a wide ranging conversation with a really smart friend over coffee. Not Milosz. Reading Milosz is like enjoying an evening in someone's formal living room, silent as an invited guest should be. It is a privilege to read these poems. Here is a contemporary who lived through it all and was not ground to dust. Here is a survivor who grew suspicious of all -- ALL -- easy solutions and was absolutely confident that, whatever The World threw at him -- and by extension, at us -- he could wrap his mind around it. Seamus Heaney's introduction says Milosz was "tender toward innocence, tough-minded when faced with brutality and injustice." In the end, he retained his awe of the natural world and his believe in the holiness of everyday things. In short, when Milosz sees us being distracted by the insistence of externals, people and things that feast on our enegy leaving us with nothing, he calls us back to ourselves, the point from which everything is adorned with meaning for each of us, the context in which even the most horrible is endurable.

"I have titled this book _The Witness of Poetry_ notbecause we witness it, but because it witnesses us," Miloszsays. This Nobel Laureate who's been around the block is believable when he says it looks like we are in big trouble. That we are a loathsome and self-loathing, despairing, cruel race isn't really news, but Milosz goes further and tells us convincingly how we got to be such [people]. If you follow him this far, you'll want to read on to see what advice he offers before it all goes up the spout (or we simply turn into zombies). So.... either read this short "poetics" and then his tiny book _Road-Side Dog_, or read _Road-Side Dog_ (maybe start with "Beautiful Girl") and then read the _Witness of Poetry_. Pretty amazing guy. -- Oh, and I don't think there'll be a movie.

"The Captive Mind" is the book written in the 20th Century that inadvertently and metaphorically best explains our present early 21st Century.

It is interesting to note that the minds of hundreds of millions were recently controlled by the dialectic materialistic dictates of Socialist Realism. The Socialist Realism paradigm was dominant and then suddenly self-destructed under the weight of its corrupting lies. Such implosion represents a great beacon of hope regarding the current oppressive degrading paradigm of Zionist Realism.

I doubt Czeslaw Milosz intended his book to be a guide to understanding the Zionist Realism paradigm under which the United States (and the World) currently suffers but he nevertheless provides great metaphorical guidance to an understanding of our current affliction. It is possible that "The Captive Mind" may eventually serve greater service to humankind as a liberating guide from Zionist Realism than it ever was for Socialist Realism.

The parallels between Socialist Realism and Zionist Realism are astounding. Fictional Murti Bing is now revealed as non-fictional Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors with essentially the same political purpose. Ketman is still popular among journalists hiding in the cracks of their self-preserving lackluster reporting. Intellectuals (pseudo) at all universities are distinguished by their equal avoidance of addressing the obvious white elephants of high Zionist crimes.

To read "The Captive Mind" is to commit a revolutionary act. It may be the equivalent of swallowing the metaphorical `red pill' or a good first step after doing so.

Without a doubt this book is one of historical perspective. The reason it is important, is that it was written in 1953, by a man who had seen how fascism, dictatorship, genocide, communism and stalinism does not just to people but to a society as a whole.

Milosz lived in Poland between the two world wars, and watched how a nation that had been eliminated by three countries, one hundred and thirty years ago; can itself, become a war monger and a destroyer of 'other' cultures in the name of rebirth. He then saw another nation (Hitler's Germany) waste it's people and soul trying to prove that they were superior to everyone else. Lastly, he watched a nation, supposedly in the name of the 'people' destroy other nations and cultures in the name of those same people.

Stalin said that the death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions are just statistics. Stalin of course was a great maker of statistics. When the 'People's Democracies' were created in Eastern Europe after WWII, their stated objective was to create a classless society, for the enhancement of the proletariat. Unfortunely, not everyone wanted to be enhanced. But, under the theory that, it is better to imprison twenty innocent people than to miss one criminal, millions were killed, tortured, and dispossessed; in order to create a 'worker's paradise'.

Milosz's stories are a warning to those that would collaborate in their own destruction.

This book is outstanding. It's one of the few books I really wish everyone was familiar with. I mean that. A lot of times if a book is really good, I sort of like that I've read it and other people haven't. It gives me sort of a shallow, self absorbed kick. This one is too good for that though.

One word to the wise, this book is not simply about how bad communism is/was, though it adresses that in detail. It's also about how any form of totalitarianism, which squelches thre freedom of the human mind is totally awful. So the way to read this is not really to say, "hey look this proves that those leftists/rightists I've always hated are totally evil and screwed up." No, it's more to look at any absolutist ideology being peddled a little bit askance. Whether it's right wing radio, or left wing marches led by A.N.S.W.E.R. anyone who thinks they are right %100 of the time is probably a shady character. I didn't make that up, I got it from the quote he used in the front of the book. But I was too lazy to go downstairs and grab the book to get the exact quote. So there you have it. This book is incredible. I'm pretty confident you'll like it. Unless you're some kind of psycho (sorry If I'm hurting your feelings).

Looking at modern day people of the left, I often notice that they have a vision of their ideologies, whether socialist, feminist, multiculturalist, etc. etc. etc., that is utopian in nature and almost impenetrable to negative feedback about the actual consequences of their policies. Exactly what is it in the human psyche that allows some ideologies to hook into someone's consciousness with such tenacity?

Czeslaw Milosz had the same questions in his day when communism was in the ascendancy on the world stage and appeared to have the winds of history at its back. He wrote THE CAPTIVE MIND in an attempt to address such issues by telling us the stories of several authors captured by the communist ideal. The result is a classic book still timely to the same issues today as we read of talented individuals willing to sell their talents, and alas their souls, over to an ideal of human perfection while justifying the trail of mass destruction and slaughter that came about instead.

In one major way, I am disappointed with the book. One of the more powerful statements that I read about totalitarian ideologies of the past was that there were numerous people outside of the ideological circle screaming their heads off about what was going on. Yet there was some mechanism or mechanisms within the ideology itself which prevented such negative feedback from entering the loop. My own experience with ideologues has demonstrated this time and again. It is just breathtaking to hear the unbelievable verbal gymnastics and mental contortions used to maintain a belief in one's sytem. I was hoping that THE CAPTIVE MIND would explore the pschological infrastructure of the totalitarian mentality far more than it does. Well, I cannot have everything, I suppose.

A reader should be aware that THE CAPTIVE MIND can be a tad difficult. Milosz often switches perspectives from his voice to others to hypotheticals and back again without clearly delineating the shifts. This can make a cursory reading ineffective and possibly even misleading. The book is not that hardgoing, so taking one's time is recommended.

"... This book speaks of the horrors of communism, a crime against humanity that killed tens of millions and a crime that many of the perpetrators still haven't been called to account for. Instead, we get "anti-war" rallies sponsored by these same butchers...."

Woah. Obviously this reviewer cheers for libertarian ideology, but these lines really show the way the modern conservative movement has in effect mutated and desecrated the great ideas of classical liberals and libertarians.

You must think that the current US foreign policy, militarism, and a national defense centralized in the pentagon protects Christian liberty from totalitarianism, right? And that common private individuals excercising their constitutional rights are unpatriotic stalinist terrorist liberty-haters? Right?

In Bourne's words, "War is the HEALTH OF THE STATE (emphasis added)". The wars governments have waged are the very main inoculator for the expansion of centralized States. Especially in regards to the US, where anti-communism transformed the conservative movement into chickenhawk clones squawking for big government and BIG morality administered by Washington DC.

It is the state which must draft civilians, or take their lives to fight for government in a war. Any enemy is suspect by the state, and always enough the very civilians in that government who dissent are some of the biggest "enemies" of the government in wartime, the "butcher" war veterans (who have actually seen service), little old ladies and average Americans.

War engorges the government to naturally take away the rights of the citizenry. National defense brings with it suppresion of liberty. The above reviewer is with his neoconservative sympathizers apologizing for all totalitarians who wage violence against innocents by that very arrogant, paternalistic badgering against the hated anti-war protestors, some of which are the true conservatives and know what a society of liberty needs: peace (maybe some actual defense too, how about it, Dubya?)


Now, to the actual book. A brilliant defense of liberal values from a nation of liberal thinkers, bravely through its history defending the best of the West for the East. Milosz and his dreamlike style should be best read in the original slavic for the full effect (like most foreign books), but its another anti-statist classic if its read in english anyway.

Poetry collections can be quite valuable things - picking one up rather than a body of work by a single author frees one of the apprehension that comes with committing to that author's work and the possibility that said author's work might not be worth owning in such a concentrated format. Conversely, a collection of multiple authors can open a reader up to poets they may have never come across otherwise. Indeed, that was one of Milosz's aims in putting together this compendium - to largely deflect the focus from the accepted and reliable canon (though Robert Frost and D.H. Lawrence do find their way in somehow) as well as provide work from an international selection of authors (though the concentration is frustratingly biased toward English, Polish and Chinese language works - not a bad thing in of itself, but it does play against the international appeal to some degree). The other criteria is that the poems be "short, clear, readable and, to use a compromised term, realist, that is, loyal toward reality and attempting to describe it as concisely as possible" (p. xv). The work rarely sways from this description, though like any good author Milosz isn't afraid to break his own rules. What you arrive at in the end, then, is a collection of easily approachable, short works of poetry that tend to shy away from a philosophical or fantastic focus. That is not to say that the philosophic and fantastic are not there in the poets' intentions, thoughts and/or subtext, but they do not overwhelm the pieces. As for the editor's contributions, he formats each page by introducing the poems with a few sentences about them printed above, but I found that the best way to read the work was to start with the poem itself and then read the editor's note. I felt that reading these notes undermined the sense of mystery and discovery that comes with navigating one's way through a new poem, though reading these thoughts after usually provided me with some new insight into the piece. However, I did feel that his interpretations left little room for argument and undermined the multiple layers that many of the works here comprise. It was as if there could be no individual readings that differed from what Milosz thought - though this was not always the case, and more obvious in his tone than his content. Another point of bother was his critique of some of the works; for example, his note on Jean Follain's "School and Nature" - "Frankly, the modernist technique consisting of unexpected associations is not to my liking, as at the end of this poem, in which drops of blood fall upon a road. In order to understand this, we must presume that there are hunters in the neighborhood, that they shot a bird, and that a wounded bird flies over the road" (p. 162). These are rare, but when they are there I can see no constructive purpose; if someone likes the image they may feel embarrassed or frustrated that the editor has forced them into arguing with them, and if they interpret the image a different way than his literal understanding, an unconfident reader may feel, again, embarrassed, and one more sure of themselves may feel irritated at the editor's apparent limitations. In any event, I can see no good in this type of note, especially in that it is printed before the poem itself and thus one may be inclined to read it before the poem, probably putting a damper on their experience. As I said before, however, this type of thing doesn't happen too often, and when it does we can forgive it, because, qualms aside, this is a very good collection of poetry. Though not every piece is awe inducing, to ask this would be somewhat ludicrous, and more often than not the works were quite enjoyable. I found many that touched me deeply, and almost all of them had multiple ways in which they could be interpreted, multiple layers and viewpoints, and thus one can come back to any number of poems again and again. Layers aside, these are all works that are short, approachable and enjoyable enough to be reread multiple times, and as long as one knows to read the editor's note after, not before as the format suggests, the poem itself, anyone can find great value in this collection.

A stellar collection of the world's poetry. Read the poetry first, though, before letting Milosz's comments sway you in any direction. Interesting to see what he thought, which wasn't always my take. Some lovely jewels of poetry. Some old, some new.

Milosz has assembled a refreshingly broad spectrum of Chinese, European, and American poetry into a solid collection. What I like about the works is that the language is terse, short, and powerful, though not always a hit with me. The Chinese works are like this, succinct, subtle, and surprisingly accessible.

To call this excellent collection of poems an "international" anthology is a bit presumptuous. The bulk of the poems were written by poets whose native language is American (88), Chinese (53), Polish (35) or French (16). The selection, however, aptly reflects the geographical stations in the life of the Nobel Prize winner of 1980, Czeslaw Milosz. Born in 1911, he lived in Poland until 1951 when he emigrated to France. In 1960, invited by the University of California, he moved to Berkeley where he lived and worked until his death in August 2004. During the Second World War he lived in Warsaw, writing for the underground presses - which probably explains why only one German poem (by Rilke) appears in this book. To put this in perspective: poetry in German ranks on the same level as Inuit poetry here, one poem each.

But never mind. After swallowing my national cultural pride, I admit that "A Book of Luminous Things" is my favorite anthology of poetry. By a wide margin. Milosz did not simply compile a "best of" collection; he created a very personal, intimate book. The poems collected in this anthology are as much about the joy of living as they are about the awareness that old age may bring. What they teach are attention to the particular and appreciation of the transitory. Milosz's proposition for the collection was to present poems, "whether contemporary or a thousand years old, that are, with few exceptions, short, clear, readable and, to use a compromised term, realist, that is, loyal toward reality and attempting to describe it as concisely as possible. Thus they undermine the widely held opinion that poetry is a misty domain eluding understanding."

Milosz titled the last chapter of his anthology "History." At first, I found it a strange choice to conclude such a personal book with a chapter of poems that for the most part deal with the inhuman crimes perpetrated in the 20th century. A strange choice in particular because the preceding chapter titled "Non-attachment" would have given the book a final note of calm and serenity. Eventually, however, I considered the last chapter quite appropriate for a poet like Milosz who was committed to realism and political activism. As much as Milosz may have admired the attitude of non-attachment - illustrated with ultimate skill by the Chinese poets in this anthology - the formative experience of his life were the unspeakable deeds of cruelty committed by Germans in his home country.

A Book of Luminous Things begins with a very short chapter titled "Epiphany." Epiphany, Milosz explains, is an unveiling of reality. What in Greek was called 'epiphaneia' meant the appearance, the arrival, of a divinity among mortals or its recognition under a familiar shape of man or woman. Epiphany thus interrupts the everyday flow of time and enters as one privileged moment when we intuitively grasp a deeper, more essential reality hidden in things or persons. This definition of epiphany informs Milosz's understanding of realism. It is in fact an understanding that goes back to Heraclitus in European intellectual history and to Chuang Tzu in Chinese intellectual history - although admittedly the poems in this anthology are more easily accessible than most of the fragments of Heraclitus and Chuang Tzu.

It is difficult to praise this book highly enough. Indirectly, surreptitiously it is a wonderful portrait of the old Czeslaw Milosz who was in his mid-eighties when he compiled it. It is also an intimate guided tour through poetry, with introductions to every chapter and short, illuminating comments on almost every poem. It is full of unexpected discoveries, especially when it comes to some contemporary female poets like Wislawa Szymborska (1923- ; Nobel Prize for Literature 1996), Denise Levertov (1923-1997), and Anna Swir (1909-1984). And finally, A Book of Luminous Things is one of the most impressive and inspiring documents of the plentiful harvest that can come with experience and age:

THE GREATEST LOVE (by Anna Swir)

She is sixty. She lives
the greatest love of her life.

She walks arm-in-arm with her dear one,
her hair streams in the wind.
Her dear one says:
"You have hair like pearls."

Her children say:
"Old fool."

This book has a collection of nearly 300 or more short poems which are concise and simple to read. The author is a prize-winner in Literature. He selected poems from many different countries and set forth excerpts for the reader to enjoy. A strength of the work is that it provides a wide range of literary style in a single work. This book would be perfect for literature enthusiasts and arts academicians . Here are samples:

" In broad daylight. I dream I am with her."


At night, I dream she is still at my side. She carries her kit of colored Threads. "
by Mei Yao Ch ' en


A Voice
"They mutilate. They torment each other with words as if they had another life to live." by Rosewicz


The book is well-organized. The presentation contains poetry
for little-known and well-known authors.

It would make a great gift for a student, elderly person or literary enthusiast. The price is reasonable for the value provided.