Laure-Anne Bosselaar's poetry captures the lives of "lost souls roaming" -- be they young girls in convents, merchants, whores, widows, soldiers. Old Europe still lives in Bosselaars's rich language: Entre chien et loup, as it's known in Flanders -- the time at dusk when a wolf can be mistaken for a dog.

Belgium's leading poet for many decades, Herman de Coninck has never been translated in English and collected in a single extended volume until now. Witty, tender, trenchant, wise, de Coninck's poems range from playful, terse love lyrics to darkly ironic, somberly truthful observations about human experience. The ability to compress huge subjects into small, formally sculptured poems is a hallmark of his style; conversely, what might seem too small to write about is often transformed by his imagination into his understanding of war, and of how psychological imperatives and social roles may trap us in self-destructive fates.

In "Small Gods of Grief," Laure-Anne Bosselaar explores her childhood in post-war Belgium and her later struggles with grief, love and identity in contemporary America. Ms. Bosselaar mixes imaginative lyrics, narratives and dramatic monologues in this empathetic account of what it means to be human.

Laure-Anne Bosselaar, a native a Belgium, has lived throughout Europe and the United States. Fluent in four languages, she has worked for Belgian and Luxembourg radio and television stations. Ms. Bosselaar's first poetry collection was the critically-acclaimed "The Hour Between Dog and Wolf" (BOA). She is an editor of poetry anthologies and is translating American poetry into French. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.