Zbigniew Herbert: the Collected Poems

The definitive collected poems of a master of twentieth-century poetry.
‘Herbert is a poet with all the strength of an Antaeus . . . He shoulders the whole sky and the scope of human dignity and responsibility.' Seamus Heaney

Zbigniew Herbert is one of the outstanding poets of the last century. This exceptional new translation brings together, for the first time in English in one volume, his entire poetic output - from his first book of poems, String of Light, in 1956, to his .nal volume, previously unpublished in English, Epilogue of the Storm. As Joseph Brodsky said of Herbert's Selected Poems, this definitive collection is ‘bound for a much longer haul than any of us can anticipate'.

This volume is edited and translated from the Polish by Alissa Valles, with additional translations by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott, and an introduction by Adam Zagajewski.

‘One of the great poets of our time.' Charles Simic, New York Times

‘Zbigniew Herbert was one of the greatest Polish writers of this century. He is a figure comparable to, say, T. S. Eliot or W. H. Auden.' New Yorker

‘Herbert's poems, even in English, seem to me finer than anything currently being written by any English or American poet.' A. Alvarez, New York Review of Books

About the author
Zbigniew Herbert (1924-1998) was a spiritual leader of the anti-communist movement in Poland. His work has been translated into almost every European language, and he won numerous prizes, including the Jerusalem Prize and the T. S. Eliot Prize. His books include Selected Poems, Report from the Besieged City and Other Poems, Mr Cognito, Still Life with a Bridle, and King of the Ants.