Facing the River: New Poems

The first paperback edition of Miłosz's late collection — published by The Ecco Press in 1995, translated by the author and Robert Hass. These are poems written after Miłosz's return to Lithuania in the spring of 1989, exactly fifty years after he had left. The river of the title is the Issa Valley river of his childhood, which he reads as the river of time and the river of mythology, the one you cannot step into twice.

Joseph Brodsky called Miłosz one of the greatest poets of our time, perhaps the greatest. Helen Vendler, in a note on the back cover, writes about the long-ranging memory of past customs that gives his work its unusual power.

Cover painting by Wojciech Kolyszko. Like new condition.