Czeslaw Milosz

For A Book of Luminous Things Nobel laureate poet Czeslaw Milosz has selected 300 of the world's greatest poems written throughout the ages, poems memorable for how they render the realities of the world palpable and immediate. They are organized under eleven headings - including "Epiphany, " "Nature, " "The Secret of a Thing, " "Travel, " "Places, " and "The Moment." In addition to his introduction, Milosz contributes brief, penetrating commentary on each poet. Among the poets included are Elizabeth Bishop William Blake, Joseph Brodsky, Constantinos Cavafy, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Allen Ginsberg, Linda Gregg, Seamus Heaney, Zbigniew Herbert, Jane Hirshfield, Robinson Jeffers, D. H. Lawrence, Denise Levertov, Philip Levine, Li Po, Antonio Machado, Thomas Merton, W. S. Merwin, Sharon Olds, Mary Oliver, Po Chu-I, Rainer Maria Rilke, Theodore Roethke, Charles Simic, Gary Snyder, Wallace Stevens, May Swenson, Anna Swir, Wislawa Szymborska, Tu Fu, Wang Wei, Walt Whitman, and William Carlos Williams.

A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry

sage lynn

Time thus appears to be composed of moments—things, or things–moments. And the artist in his work has to capture and to preserve one moment, which becomes, indeed, eternal.

we awaken dying— / violet becoming blue, growing / black, black—all that / an iris ever prays, / when it prays, / to be

religiously he swallows the silver leaf / with its broken red river, and with a rough and easy cry / I couldn’t rouse out of my thoughtful body / if my life depended on it, he swings back / over the bright sea to do the same thing, to do it / (as I long to do something, anything) perfectly.

A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry quotes

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