First published in 1976, this astonishing anthology from two U.S. Poet Laureates, Charles Simic and Mark Strand, compiles a selection of the finest translated literature of the time, showcasing the then-little-known writers who had a profound influence on the current generation of poets.

Two of our foremost poets provide here a lucid, straightforward primer that "looks squarely at some of the headaches and mysteries of poetic form": a book for readers who have always felt that an understanding of form (sonnet, ballad, villanelle, sestina, among others) would enhance their appreciation of poetry. Tracing "the exuberant history of forms," they devote one chapter to each form, offering explanation, close reading, and a rich selection of examplars that amply demonstrate the power and possibility of that form.

Choosing 100 great poems of the English language is a staggering prospect for even the worthiest editor. It involves the considerable task of culling from the entire canon a select group of poets and each one's single most important poem. In The Golden Ecco Anthology, Mark Strand, recent poet laureate of the United States and editor of Contemporary American Poets, Another Republic, and The Best American Poetry 1991, combines 100 poetic voices in a masterful celebration of the English language. With seamless grace he moves from era to era and voice to voice and his selections are often surprising, always remarkable. It is safe to say that Strand, who received the 1992 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry for his 1990 collection The Continuous Life and last year's prestigious Bollingen Prize, has a vision that encompasses both the consummate practice and informed appreciation of his art. The poems that Strand chooses do not in their intractable finesse slam the door on the poets' skills as if to say: "There you have it!" On the contrary, his choices hint at range in virtuosity and provide wonderful openings into the artists' greater work.

Strand's poems occupy a place that exists between abstraction and the sensuous particulars of experience. It is a place created by a voice that moves with unerring ease between the commonplace and the sublime. The poems are filled with "the weather of leavetaking," but they are also unexpectedly funny. The erasure of self and the depredations of time are seen as sources of sorrow, but also as grounds for celebration. This is one of the difficult truths these poems dramatize with stoicism and wit. The winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Blizzard of One is an extraordinary book--the summation of the work of a lifetime by one of our very few true masters of the art of poetry.