Bells in Winter

In Bells in Winter, Milosz tells us he doesn't quite fit into our age with its 'chess games' of 'killing for the common good,' that 'like the mermaid from Andersen's tale, I tried to walk correctly but a thin pain reminded me that I was foolish to try to imitate people.' No other book connects Milosz's essays about the pain of living in our Blakean 'Land of Ulro' to his poetry as well as this, with its shocking poetic insights into how humans got themselves into this mess, often given in a single swift, double-edged metaphor, as in the Notes section: 'The tempter in the garden: A still-looking branch, both cold and living.' A ton of philosophy, sorrow, and hope in a crafty little phrase -- the quintessential Milosz.

Like just a handful of poets (Yeats comes instantly to mind), Czeslaw Milosz has surrendered none of his artistic powers to old age. Yet the poems collected here, which date back as far as 1936, indicate that the future Nobelist was playing at the top of his game from the beginning. The shorter lyrics, like "Ars Poetica?", are true marvels. And while the longer sequences can be a touch uneven, devolving into prose-like paragraphs, they remain object lessons for any poet in any language--and any intelligent reader.