Provinces [Paperback]

Czeslaw Milosz (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"In Provinces Czeslaw Milosz continues exploring his own version of themeditative lyric, refusing to rest on his laurels or to be imprisoned by hisCollected Poems, 1931-1987 . . . Consequently, he joins the ranks of other great poets of old age, such as Robert Penn Warren and W. B. Yeatshimself." -- ' The New York Times Book Review

"In his early 80's, in some of the best poetry of his "career" (if such a smallhearted word applies to this kind of a life), Milosz is still asking questions that are virtually unanswerable but morally essential: What is it like to have been alive? Who am I? Have I done more good than evil? The first and final province, as Milosz has seemed to know more and more surely over the years, is desire. If it is desire that always leads us away from our beginnings, then it is also through it that we are always being led back toward them, never quite getting there, but creating the world, and ourselves as we go." -- ' The Harvard Review

"Milosz is one of the most compelling and universallyrelevant voices of this century." -- Booklist

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Czech

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Product Details

• Paperback: 72 pages
• Publisher: Ecco (May 21, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0880013214
• ISBN-13: 978-0880013215
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,750,794 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing poetry, November 16, 2009

By 

Michael Munnik (Ottawa) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Provinces (Paperback)

I first encountered Milosz when a poem of his was printed in Harper's about eight years ago. Stunning stuff, so I've always kept an eye out for his works. About two months ago, I was on a silent retreat in the Berkshires, and a copy of this volume was on the library shelf. A great companion for days of autumn silence and solitude. Milosz considers the big subjects, the essential questions. So it was perfect food for my contemplative brain. At a time when I am steadily losing interest in modern free verse poetry that reads more like dull and fragmentary journalism than anything really beautiful, Milosz in this collection reminds me that the form is not dead but vibrantly alive (though the poet himself is no longer with us.) Great book - highly recommended.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Let the Endgames Begin, May 21, 2001

By 

Robert M. West (Starkville, MS) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Provinces (Paperback)

PROVINCES finds Polish Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz confronting the quandaries of old age. Milosz has always been a philosophical poet, and he is so in these poems--but often here his philosophizing turns to the topic of philosophy's failures. In poems such as "Conversation with Jeanne" and "December 1," he tells us that the philosophical and theological arguments that impressed him when he was younger do so no longer. Indeed, several poems, such as "Blacksmith Shop" and "In Common," abandon abstract contemplation in favor of celebrating the physical world. This concern with things for their own sake is also embodied in his poem "Linnaeus," which offers a tribute to the inventor of modern taxonomy.

As W.B. Yeats does in his late poems, Milosz writes from the perspective of being a widely admired poet grown old. These poems dramatize his internal conflicts, including his doubts about his life's work: he refers to himself in the first, second, and third persons, and some poems openly take the form of internal conversations. These are powerful poems of old age, as often self-ironizing as self-elegizing.

Reading translated poetry can be a matter of making allowances, but that's not the case here: Milosz's collaboration with translator Robert Hass results in memorable English renderings of the Polish originals.