No Polish writer has enjoyed greater renown in the West than Czeslaw Milosz. Of the two Polish winners of the Nobel Prize in literature before Milosz, Henryk Sienkiewicz (in 1905) and Wladyslaw Reymont (in 1924), the former gained enormous popularity in France and the United States, but only briefly; the latter remained virtually unknown and largely untranslated despite the prize. Among the post-World War II writers, several did become well known in the West, most notably Witold Gombrowicz, Tadeusz Rózewicz, Zbigniew Herbert; and Wislawa Szymborska, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1996. But their recognition in the United States has not equaled that of Milosz, who has been described on occasion as not only a Polish but also an American poet.

Throughout most of his long literary career, however, Milosz was virtually unknown to the wider readership. Before World War II his first two volumes of poetry, which had...