Life Sentence: Selected Poems

Nina Cassian's Selected Poems is a wonderful collection of her work, translated by some other great poets and translators (Richard Wilbur, Dana Gioia, William Jay Smith, and Carolyn Kizer). This collection isn't just about the art of poetry, it is about the art of translation. I wish there had been biographical notes on the translators, but other than that, it's a wonderful collection. I recommend it.

Nina Cassian's poetry is some of the most extraordinary to emerge from Eastern Europe in many years, and American readers can thank editor and translator William Jay for putting together this collection of samples of Cassian's best work, including some translations by the author herself. A resident of the United States since 1985, having been exiled from her own country, Nina Cassian is a poet who is both academic and accessible. Her fluid, easily grasped metaphors and poetic leaps have a charm which sets her apart from her more obscure, less emotional contemporaries.