Changing Centuries: Selected Poems of Fernando Alegria
by Fernando Alegria, Stephen Kessler (Translator)
Fernando Alegria left Chile after the military coup in 1973, and, as might be expected, the coup looms large in his poetry. In poems like the hard-hitting and eerie "The Disappeared Will Inherit the Earth" -- where the thousands of "disappeared" come back to exact their revenge -- Alegria writes of what his country has become, and he's not impressed. In other poems (all of which are in both English and Spanish), he writes of revolutions from other parts of South and Central America; he also looks at love, and life, often with a glass of red wine in hand. There are poems as fabulous as the wildest magic realism, while others describe the actions and items of everyday life -- although this may not be everyday life as you know it. These are complicated poems that repay repeated readings.

New and Collected Poems 1931-2001
by Czeslaw Milosz
This amazing volume deserves a place on bookshelves and bedside tables all around the world. Nobel Prize-winner Milosz has been writing for more than 70 years, and this collection contains work from each period of his life (including work from this new millennium). Milosz's poems run the gamut from the most serious subjects to entertainingly light pieces celebrating life. Milosz -- whose other books include the rare and dark novel, The Captive Mind -- is one of the better-known European poets. His work is often translated relatively quickly, although there is a whole book of poems -- This -- being published here for the first time in English. This collection is a worthy gift for Milosz readers new and old...and, as an introduction to the life of a poet, there could hardly be a better book.

The Gift: Poems by Hafiz the Great Sufi Master
by Hafiz, Daniel Ladinsky (Translator)
If you've exhausted the many translations of Rumi, why not try another Sufi poet, Hafiz? Hafiz's poetry, as translated from the Farsi by Daniel Ladinsky, is as light as the sun in spring. Hafiz wrote love poems in the way that any master of a form at the top of their game produces their best. The 250 (generally quite short) poems here are definitely love letters to the infinite.

Hafiz's poems are some of the simplest, most delightful poems ever written. They have the simplicity of a child's point of view, but are infused with the maturity and knowledge of adulthood. Ladinsky has translated the poems into a modern English that catches the imagination and asks the reader to look around with fresh eyes to see and enjoy this beautiful world.

The Iron-Blue Vault
by Attila József, Zsuzsanna Ozsvath (Translator), Frederick Turner (Translator)
Attila József is one of Hungary's best-known poets. He died in 1937, either by his own hand, or victim of a tragic accident, depending on which source you read. His early -- and perhaps, later? -- life was passed in misery and poverty unredeemed by anything or anyone. Given his upbringing, his later radical leanings are not surprising. However, his poetry is just a collection of thinly disguised rants against capitalist overlords. His poems range in the turn of a page from delicate musings on love to ragings on the fate of the working class. He also occasionally makes use of that middle-European surrealist voice best known in the works of Kafka. This collection also has a biography and an analysis of József's intense and sometimes richly beautiful poetry.

Collected Poems in English
by Joseph Brodsky
Brodsky won the Nobel Prize for Literature before he was 50, and this comprehensive collection proves those judges knew what they were doing. The poems here are a mix of those translated by Brodsky himself, and by other translators -- the latter of which Brodsky also sometimes worked on as well. Many of Brodsky's poem's are immaculately formal in structure and tone, and cover deep and dark emotional territory. Then there are poems like, "History of the Twentieth Century (A Roadshow)," which is at once complicated and accessible, and sometimes utilizes the informal language of everyday conversations.

The Half-Finished Heaven
by Tomas Transtromer
Tomas Transtromer seems to be in with a chance at the Nobel Prize: his work has been translated (from his native Swedish) into 30 languages, and has been already received many international prizes, including the Petrach Prize in Germany, the Bonnier Award for Poetry, and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Influential since the 1960s, this is a collection of Transtromer's best poems as selected and translated by Robert Bly. Transtromer's poems are methodical yet meditational, seeming almost a part of the natural world in the same way as Gary Snyder's best work. They are coolly removed, mystical and delicate, holding opposites within themselves; easy to read, yet with a long-lasting impact. It's going to be a hot summer -- The Half-Finished Heaven will keep you cool.

Further Reading:

April Daily Picks: Now, Then
Monday Poems
Charles Rafferty
Simone Muench
Eleanor Lerman
Paul Muldoon
John Crowley's latest novel, The Translator, (a Book Sense 76 pick) has a Russian poet coming to the U.S.