Branko Miljkovic, whose meteoric poetic career left an indelible mark on contemporary Serbian poetry, was a leading representative of a generation of poets who emerged on the Yugoslav literary scene in the mid 1950s. Miljkovic rose to prominence in the wake of the literary confrontations that marked the definitive demise of postwar socialist realism in Yugoslavia. Miljkovic and his contemporaries quickly bloomed in the new literary climate. Theirs was a generation that had been nurtured on modern French, English, and Russian poetry. Well-read and actively involved in literary translation, Miljkovic's generation of poets created a newly cerebral poetry, characterized by extreme erudition and intellectualism, a poetry essentially aimed at literary and critical circles.

Miljkovic was born in Nis, Serbia, on 29 January 1934. He was a child when World War II broke out, and the tragic vision of life that strongly permeates his poetry may have had its roots in...