Ben P reviewed Facing The River by Czesław Miłosz
Review of 'Facing The River' on 'GoodReads'
3 stars
I am still fairly new to Czeslaw Milosz's work, having been first exposed to it, briefly, in college, before picking up Bells in Winter a year or two ago, but this book contains my favorite poems so far. The back story certainly adds to the appeal: this collection was written after a visit to the river valley in which Milosz grew up, but which he never expected to revisit. In 1989, fifty years after he had left, Lithuania's new independent government welcomed him back. As such, these poems seem written with a bright, youthful eagerness, and are tempered with a grandfatherly tenderness (Milosz was in his 80s at the time of its publication).
My favorite poems are introduced and developed with attendant commentary that elucidates Milosz's references to obscure Polish art or literature, without distracting the reader from the poems themselves (or rendering them an abstruse rehashing of the prose …
I am still fairly new to Czeslaw Milosz's work, having been first exposed to it, briefly, in college, before picking up Bells in Winter a year or two ago, but this book contains my favorite poems so far. The back story certainly adds to the appeal: this collection was written after a visit to the river valley in which Milosz grew up, but which he never expected to revisit. In 1989, fifty years after he had left, Lithuania's new independent government welcomed him back. As such, these poems seem written with a bright, youthful eagerness, and are tempered with a grandfatherly tenderness (Milosz was in his 80s at the time of its publication).
My favorite poems are introduced and developed with attendant commentary that elucidates Milosz's references to obscure Polish art or literature, without distracting the reader from the poems themselves (or rendering them an abstruse rehashing of the prose which precedes them).
