From Publishers Weekly
"Man has been given to understand/ that he lives only by the grace of those in power./ Let him therefore busy himself sipping coffee, catching butterflies." So muses Polish migr poet and Nobel laureate Milosz in one of his earlier poems, and such might be the principle guiding this most recent collection of his writings. Bits and pieces of memoir are ranged in alphabetical order, making up a curious glossary of a life lived in Poland and the United States and a literary career spanning six decades. Reminiscences of Poland before, during and after WWII occupy much of the volume. Even when Milosz is chronicling his life since he settled permanently in California in 1960, after a period of exile in France, his memories center on friends made in childhood at school in Wilno. Brief character sketches are intermixed with reflections on subjects like Milosz's sense of obligation to the Polish language and Polish literary tradition, his admiration of poets like Walt Whitman and Joseph Brodsky, and, more generally, on themes like curiosity, fame and terror. It is these sections that will engage American readers, who elsewhere are likely to flounder in a sea of names. The fragments of autobiography collected in this edition represent only a selection from the texts of two Polish ABCs, and readers will be grateful for the culling. It is difficult to escape the sense thatDlike butterflies in a dusty caseDthe scraps of memory affixed here have lost their living glitter. (Jan.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
The Nobel prize winner's thoughts and memoriesAin ABC format, a popular genre in his native Poland. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Milosz's place was Polish Lithuania, especially Wilno or Vilnius, the center of East European Jewish culture. Milosz hasn't lived there since before World War II, and it barely exists since Nazism and Communism got through with it, but spiritually he has never left. It surfaces often in his alphabet of reflections on people, places, and things that affected his life and work. The people are mostly other writers and artists, both personal acquaintances and a few influences, such as Dostoyevsky. The places are mostly Californian, and figure in his later life. The things are qualities, such as love, fame, and inaccuracy; literary forms, such as ballads and anonymous letters; and great cultural forces, such as gold and the Russian language. Milosz says the book is perhaps "instead of a novel, . . . instead of a memoir." It would be foolish to spurn it as such, though, for it beautifully illuminates the rest of the invaluable record of twentieth-century horror and heroism that is one of Milosz's literary achievements. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The ABC book is a polish genre-a loose form related to a hypertext novel-composed of short, alphabetically arranged entries. In Milosz's conception, the ABC book becomes a sort of autobiographical reference book, combining entries concerning characters from his earlier work with references to some of his memory poems. He also writes of real, historical figures like Camus who were particularly influential during his formative years, and of broader topics such as "The City," "Unhappiness," and "Money." Another fascinating entry in Milosz's bold opus, Milosz's ABCs is an engaging tribute to a brilliant mind.

FROM THE CRITICS

Edward Hirsch - New York Times Book Review

It is a source of wonderment and pleasure that at the age of 89, Czeslaw Milosz, arguably the greatest living poet, continues to publish exploratory works of self-definition and commemoration. Milosz's A B C's, expertly translated from the Polish by Madeline G. Levine, remakes the relatively recent Polish genre of the A B C book -- a kind of subgenre of memoir -- so that it becomes a flexible hybrid form, a probing and quirky reference book....In the end, Milosz's A B C's is a benedictory text, an alphabetical rescue operation, a testimonial to those who have suffered and gone before us, a hymn to the everlasting marvel and mystery of human existence.

Book Magazine

Milosz has experienced the twentieth century in a profound way, and his poetry and prose deal with life directly and purposefully. This book, inspired by a Polish literary genre called abecadlo, presents a poetic form as old as the ancient Hebrew acrostics. "My time, my twentieth century, weighs on me as a host of voices and the faces of people whom I once knew," writes Milosz, whose extraordinary biography is inextricably connected to the genius of his work. From A to Z, the poet describes the lives of friends, relatives and co-workers who have endured politically motivated psychological torture, mass deportations, concentration camps and summary executions. Their stories reflect the terrible consequences of warped idealism and social determinism. The great poet's observations of the horrors visited on Poland in the 1940s are characterized by wisdom rather than nihilism. Readers who take seriously poetry, history and philosophy should read Milosz's work. —Stephen Whited ISBN 0670894869 Collected Stories Saul Bellow Viking 464 pages

Publishers Weekly

"Man has been given to understand/ that he lives only by the grace of those in power./ Let him therefore busy himself sipping coffee, catching butterflies." So muses Polish migr poet and Nobel laureate Milosz in one of his earlier poems, and such might be the principle guiding this most recent collection of his writings. Bits and pieces of memoir are ranged in alphabetical order, making up a curious glossary of a life lived in Poland and the United States and a literary career spanning six decades. Reminiscences of Poland before, during and after WWII occupy much of the volume. Even when Milosz is chronicling his life since he settled permanently in California in 1960, after a period of exile in France, his memories center on friends made in childhood at school in Wilno. Brief character sketches are intermixed with reflections on subjects like Milosz's sense of obligation to the Polish language and Polish literary tradition, his admiration of poets like Walt Whitman and Joseph Brodsky, and, more generally, on themes like curiosity, fame and terror. It is these sections that will engage American readers, who elsewhere are likely to flounder in a sea of names. The fragments of autobiography collected in this edition represent only a selection from the texts of two Polish ABCs, and readers will be grateful for the culling. It is difficult to escape the sense that--like butterflies in a dusty case--the scraps of memory affixed here have lost their living glitter. (Jan.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal