Czeslaw Milosz is one of those rare writers who survives transplantation. Forced into exile, most writers, even so well-established as Thomas Mann, even so heralded and carefully tended as Joseph Brodsky, tend to slowly atrophy. Cut off from the root of all style, the praktik of a language, their work becomes increasingly disoriented…. But Milosz has managed to hold on to his inner world…. Kenneth Rexroth notes, in his brief introduction [to Selected Poems], that Milosz's own poetry has now "crossed the borders of language and stands in translation as amongst the very small body of truly important poetry being written in English and French today." Whatever posterity may think, the statement seems to me pretty much indisputable. (pp. 145-46)

Milosz' noblest and truest voice [can be heard in the poem "Dedication"]. Something has been lost in translation, but even without the music of the original this can...