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Rating: 
Summary: Milosz and Shakespeare: Best Poets of all Time
Review: Milosz's poetry has a kind of energy that makes you want to shout on a rooftop: read this book. Any poet of any stature writes poems that fail to rise to the level of masterpieces, but in this book of 750 pages they are few and far between. The translator deserves much credit for these poem read as if they were originally written in English.
I used to think that Paul Celan captured the horror of war torn Europe the best, but Milosz now wins the title. The first books of this collection are harrowing and wistful.
The books written from California and France take a more metaphysical tone but never fail to be touching and humane.
The most recent poems detailing growing old are often funny but always reminiscent of just how much he has paid for growing up during wartime.
Shakespeare and Milosz had their fingers on the pulse of the human condition and have created poems that will truly last forever.
I recommend this book even to people who do not normally read poetry. It has changed me--- for the better.
Rating:
Summary: After 9.11
Review: After September 11th, I, a formerly avid reader, could no longer read anything but news, dreadful news. A lifelong subscriber to the New Yorker, I picked up an issue which magically opened to a poem by Milosz. I think it was the first or second issue that followed the bombings.The poem provided one of those rare moments where one feels transformed by words, where life is worth living again because someone said something so beautifully that it was again worth it to continue on. I don't even know if Milosz wrote that poem specifically in response to what happened on September 11th; surely he saw greater horrors in Poland than we can even imagine. Yet ever since, his words have granted me peace, not only from the fear of annihilation through disaster, but from the ultimate annihilation of death. I also love that he's still writing at ninety. I love how, against all odds, he decided to fall the way of faith. I read one of his poems each night, like a prayer, like a song.
Rating:
Summary: After 9.11
Review: After September 11th, I, a formerly avid reader, could no longer read anything but news, dreadful news. A lifelong subscriber to the New Yorker, I picked up an issue which magically opened to a poem by Milosz. I think it was the first or second issue that followed the bombings. The poem provided one of those rare moments where one feels transformed by words, where life is worth living again because someone said something so beautifully that it was again worth it to continue on. I don't even know if Milosz wrote that poem specifically in response to what happened on September 11th; surely he saw greater horrors in Poland than we can even imagine. Yet ever since, his words have granted me peace, not only from the fear of annihilation through disaster, but from the ultimate annihilation of death. I also love that he's still writing at ninety. I love how, against all odds, he decided to fall the way of faith. I read one of his poems each night, like a prayer, like a song.
Rating:
Summary: A Beautiful, Important Work by a true Master...
Review: Students of literature and philosophy familiar with the poetry and political-mythological writing of Nobel Prize winner Czeslaw
Milosz do not need to be convinced that NEW and COLLECTED POEMS: 1931-2001 is a treasure. The author essays power and profundity in his study of totalitarian mentality in THE CAPTIVE MIND.In THE EMPEROR of the EARTH: Modes of Eccentric Vision, he dissected the nihilistic essence of Post-Modernism and those infatuated by it. But it is as POET that Milosz manifests genius...tempered by humility and GRATITUDE ...in bedazzling insights into the human condition.Unlike Solzhenitsyn, with whom he bears comparison as Cross-bearer of TRUTH, Milosz seems...as poets must...more capable of life-affirming epiphanies of love, beauty and friendship with man and nature in the face of chaos, deceit, violence and suffering; that has characterized --and continues to erupture--the 20th century... I propose here we have another Dante. This marvelous work is his DIVINE TRAGEDY. The SUMMA...poetic, historic, gnostic, archetypal... jouney, quest, trial of a gifted man doomed to understand cosmic forces in apocalyptic battle for the tiny(cosmic???)souls of men is his epic account of what St. Augustine rendered as The City of God vs. The City of Man. Is beauty here? Are there "time-out's" for play(song;lust; games; most important of all: redemptive hope and wonder-in-gratitude)? Readers of Czeslaw Milosz already know or think they know his poetic "replies".TRUTH is beauty. But not the "cheap" Keat's Urn-stuff...It must affirm GOOD. On pp. 252-253,Milosz WARNS a
child (Berkeley college student in 1963)against BE-coming a liar: "If you have not read the Slavic poets/ so much the better. There's nothing there for a Scotch-Irish wanderer to seek./ They lived in a childhood prolonged from age to age./ For them, the sun and moon was a farmer's ruddy face, the moon peeped through a cloud and the Milky Way gladdened them like a birch-lined road./They longed for the Kingdom that was always near, always right at hand......WHAT HAVE I TO DO WITH YOU? You did not know what I know./ No one with impunity gives to himself
the eyes of a god.../Better to carve suns and moons on the joints of crosses...as was done in my district...to implore protection against the mute and treacherous might/ than to proclaim, as you did, an inhuman thing..." Agree with the voice that prompted St. Augustine 2000 years ago; or recently in the laudatory article printed in April's ATLANTIC MONTHLY: "Take and read"...this beautiful, important work by a true Master.
Rating:
Summary: Modern Sublime
Review: This collection of poetry is pure transcendence. I was amazed with the quality of these poems--how they were selected and arranged--as well as the translations (Hass). Were these poems actually written in a language other than English? It does not seem so here. I couldn't imagine even the slightest nuance or reverberation of langauge lost in this work. I highly recommend this volume. It seems more logical than previous Milosz collections, and the poems here make it clear that his Nobel Prize in Literature was well-deserved. Milosz is a prophet and soothsayer of the modern era. And with this collection, despite its price, each poem is economically precise and wise; there is no monetary value that could estimate the value of this superb collection. The most interesting aspect of this volume is recognizing familiar Milosz poems juxtaposed with his latest work (2000). His latest work has the depth of lived experience and a maturity of patient observation of the human condition. Its strength lies in its approach to elemental themes: growing older, mortality, the trials of love and war, the purity of faith's optimism. This book is a "must have."
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Summary: Brilliant Poetry
Review: This is a great collection of poetry from a truly amazing man. The things he's been through in his life of over 90 years provide amazing backdrops for his poetry and breathe wonderful detail into his poetry. I can pick up his book every day and still love it as much as the day I bought it. If you don't take my word for it, take the Nobel Prize distributors' word for it, since he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1980. If you buy one book of poetry in your life, buy this book! It is amazing and will have a great impact on your poetry and your life!
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant Poetry
Review: This is a great collection of poetry from a truly amazing man. The things he's been through in his life of over 90 years provide amazing backdrops for his poetry and breathe wonderful detail into his poetry. I can pick up his book every day and still love it as much as the day I bought it. If you don't take my word for it, take the Nobel Prize distributors' word for it, since he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1980. If you buy one book of poetry in your life, buy this book! It is amazing and will have a great impact on your poetry and your life!
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