The year 1928, an important year in Croatian poetry, marks the beginning of a new generation of poets with Slavko Mihalic, born that year; Josip Pupacic, also born in 1928; Vlado Gotovac, born in 1930; Irena Vrkljan (1930); Ivan Slamnig (1930); and Antun Soljan (1932). These groundbreakers and pathfinders, joined by Vesna Parun and Nikola Milicevic (both born in 1922), have spent their lives balancing their works between hope and despair, between themes that explore the life of the individual and those that probe the life of the social order. Their tug-of-war has taken them from World War II through the Cold War and on to the new Balkan wars as they define, each time anew, the dynamic of the modern intellectual and his or her relationship and responsibilities to society.

The poet Charles Simic has said of Mihalic's generation that they "survived an epoch of unimaginable violence." After living his teenage years during World...