Winter Dialogue: Poems - Tapa dura

This collection of thirty poems may be compared to the critical essays that have made Venclova famous. Venclova's major poetic accomplishment is his linking of intimate experience and historical incident in poems that are intensely contemporary at the same time as they reach back to the ethnic roots of an entire generation. Diana Senechal's deft translation from the Lithuanian - done in collaboration with the author - preserves both Venclova's lyric voice and the complex stanzaic patterns for which his poetry is known in his native country. Featuring an insightful introduction by the late Joseph Brodsky, and a fascinating exhange between Venclova and Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz about the city of their respective youths.

Tomas Venclova (born September 11, 1937, Klaipeda) is a Lithuanian scholar, poet, author and translator of literature. Tomas Venclova is son of poet and Soviet politician Antanas Venclova. He was educated at Vilnius University. As an active participant in the dissident movement he was deprived of Soviet citizenship in 1977 and had to emigrate. He is one of the founders of Lithuanian Helsinki Watch group (December 1, 1976). Venclova studied at Tartu University and was strongly influenced by the brand of structuralism prevalent there in the 1970s and 1980s.