Estonia's Jaan Kaplinski is one of Europe's major poets. This selection brings together work from three books previously unpublished in English. These range from the intimate domestic portraits of Evening Brings Everything Back to the later poems of Summers and Springs, in which Kaplinski the public man ñ Nobel nominee and Parliamentary Deputy ñ reflects on the role of the individual in the world. The book's centrepiece is his autobiographical prose-poem Ice and Heather, an extended exploration of identity and the idea of 'home' which is more topical than ever in today's changing Europe.
"He is a rare mixture of intellect and real simplicity. Very conscious of the places words cannot reach, his poems create a space around them that is intensely good to be in."
Philip Gross
"A new light in the European galaxy."
Peter Levi, Independent
"He is re-thinking Europe, revisioning history, in these poems of our times. Elegant, musing, relentless, inward, fresh. Poems of gentle politics and love that sometimes scare you."
Gary Snyder
"Hell and heaven are exhilaratingly interfused in these poems, and the poet's scale is his own littleness in 'this huge blind wind'. His poems loom and soar, veering from lines of one word to sweeping bravura meditations, and achieve a great beauty."
Adam Thorpe, Observer
"He is a rare mixture of intellect and real simplicity. Very conscious of the places words cannot reach, his poems create a space around them that is intensely good to be in."
Philip Gross
"A new light in the European galaxy."
Peter Levi, Independent
"He is re-thinking Europe, revisioning history, in these poems of our times. Elegant, musing, relentless, inward, fresh. Poems of gentle politics and love that sometimes scare you."
Gary Snyder
"Hell and heaven are exhilaratingly interfused in these poems, and the poet's scale is his own littleness in 'this huge blind wind'. His poems loom and soar, veering from lines of one word to sweeping bravura meditations, and achieve a great beauty."
Adam Thorpe, Observer