Through the Poet’s Eye

Though best known as poets, Zbigniew Herbert (1924-1998), Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996), and Adam Zagajewski (b. 1945) wrote some of the most original prose of this century. These East European poets capture tales of their travels in prose writing that demonstrates the link between works of art, the epiphanic responses these works produce, and the reality of travel. Shallcross's exploration of their journeys creates a testimony connecting them each in his own way to the stream of European culture as a whole.

"Bozena Shallcross has written a rich, ardent, and evocative critical study of the artistic encounters, the epiphanic travels, and the magisterial prose of three major poets whose writings have a transfiguring spiritual power. Through the Poet's Eye is a work of felt connections, of luminous perceptions, and it honors the poets it addresses." --Edward Hirsch