Product Description
Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz selects and introduces 300 of his favorite poems in this “magnificent collection” that ranges “widely across time and continents, from eighth century China to contemporary americanca” (San Francisco Chronicle). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (17)

An anthology for everyone!!
This is an anthology that can please most tastes. It makes the reader think about the human condition, existentialism and simple and memorable happenings.
It is wonderful to see so many big names such asHerbert, Hass, Milosz, Jeffers, and Szymborska, reunited in one book.

A Luminous World!!
A Book of Luminous Things celebrates the ordinary, the joy of living, the awareness gained through maturity and the poetic spirit. The poems which are presented are written by American, Chinese, Polish and French poets.
The anthology begins with a very short chapter titled "Epiphany" and ends with a chapter titled "History". Epiphany is a privileged awakening to a deeper reality hidden in things and persons whereas History is an awareness of the ugly reality of the unspeakable deeds of cruelty committed in times of war.
I loved specially the contributions of Herbert, Hass, Milosz, Levertov, Swir, Jeffers, and Szymborska.
A great work!

Joyce Akesson, author of Love's Thrilling Dimensions and The Invitation

Anyone can find great value in this collection
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.

Collection surprisingly wide scope, but terse.
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.

Truly luminous 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. ... Read more

Product Description
Vilnius is celebrated today as the centre of nationalistic fervour which marked Lithuania's declaration of independence from the USSR and the beginning of the Soviet empire's downfall. But when Nobel Prize-winning author Czeslaw Milosz was born there it was called Wilno, and was Polish. In this book he celebrates this remarkable city, with its rich heritage of diverse cultures, languages and beliefs, using its streetmap as a backdrop to portraits of its people and places. Some are famous, others unknown, but all are described with the same perception and understanding. Literature is, of course, a central theme of the book. Milosz discusses writers as varied as Dostoyevsky, Fennimore Cooper and Swedenborg, as well as many of his Polish and Lithuanian contemporaries. ... Read more