Alfonsas Nyka-Niliunas is a pivotal figure in Lithuanian exile poetry and in the general development of Lithuanian verse. In his carefully wrought poems, profound and complex personal emotions become articulated as tightly controlled statements of an intellectual quest set in a broad panorama of world culture. Scholar Viktorija Skrupskelyte, in a 1973 article, defines Nyka-Niliunas's importance: he "sought to open up Lithuanian poetry to the adventures of the intellect. He broke away from what he regarded as a predominantly lyrical mode in the preceding generation and set out to create a poetry of discovery and exploration." This important change of direction stemmed from two factors. One was Nyka-Niliunas's erudition, developed from his lifelong intellectual curiosity and his fluency in several foreign languages that led to wide readings of French, German, Latin, English, and Russian authors. The other factor was the condition of exile, in which he began to write...