No native genius has mattered more to European poetry, it's spirituality and psychology, since Dante. Milosz's contribution to Polish literature, European literature and the entire Western Canon cannot be overestimated. ( )

This is a collection of poems by a Nobel prize winner. Milosz knows that vivid language need not be a presentation of elitist vocabulary or fad-like grammatical complexity as long as you have something to say. Of course you expect to find fine political poems by an eastern European, for who could not be inspired by the conditions of that region, but his universal musings on the human condition are just as touching.

And so I leave a sample to let him speak for himself:

"A Confession

My Lord, I loved strawberry jam
And the dark sweetness of a woman's body.
Also well-chilled vodka, herring in olive oil,
Scents, of cinnamon, of cloves.
So what kind of prophet am I? Why should the spirit
Have visited such a man? Many others
Were justly called, and trustworthy.
Who would have trusted me? For they saw
How I empty glasses, throw myself on food,
And glance greedily at the waitress's neck.
Flawed and aware of it. Desiring greatness,
Able to recognize greatness wherever it is,
And yet not quite, only in part, clairvoyant,
I know what was left for smaller men like me:
A feast of brief hopes, a rally of the proud,
A tournament of hunchbacks, literature."