"A stunning, intimate collection by Adam Zagajewski (1945-2021), "the most pertinent, impressive, meaningful poet of our time" (Mary Oliver)"--

A selection of short prose pieces by the Polish poet incorporates the author's reflections on an eclectic array of books, ranging from titles on cooking, yoga, gardening, and home repair to volumes on opera and world literature.

"One of the greatest poets of postwar Poland, Krynicki was born in 1943 in a Nazi labor camp in Austria, where his parents, Polish peasants from Ukraine, served as slave laborers. Act of Birth marked the emergence of a major voice--with Adam Zagajewski and Stanislaw Baranczak--in Poland's "Generation of '68" or "New Wave" of Polish poetry. Political and poetic rebellion converged for these poets, and the regime took notice. During the 1970s and '80s,...

"One of Europe's greatest recent poets is also its wisest, wittiest, and most accessible. Nobel Prize-winner Wislawa Szymborska draws us in with her unexpected, unassuming humor. Her elegant, precise poems pose questions we never thought to ask. 'If you want the world in a nutshell,' a Polish critic remarks, 'try Szymborska.' But the world held in these lapidary poems is larger than the one we thought we knew. Carefully edited by her longtime, award-winning...