Aco Sopov is one of the most important Macedonian poets. He was born on 20 December 1923 in Stip, in eastern Macedonia, where he attended both primary and secondary school. Influenced by his mother, a schoolteacher who herself wrote love lyrics, Sopov's poetic debut took the form of writing for a wall newspaper in his high school. Various societies there provided a focus for people of a literary bent, and to one of these, Vanco Prke--himself a budding poet strongly influenced by Miroslav Krleza--Sopov showed his first notebooks containing poems inspired by current events. As a young man caught up in the enthusiasm of a revolutionary situation, Sopov wrote his first poems in social protest, as a revolt against injustice.

On the eve of Yugoslavia's involvement in World War II, which began in 1941, Sopov wrote the poem "Anovite" (Inns), describing the fate of the last soldiers to be drafted into...