An original collection of work by the great Serbian poet of the twentieth century.

Vasko Popa is widely recognized as one of the great poets of the twentieth century, a riddling fabulist, whose work, taking its bearings from the songs and folklore of his native his Serbia and from surrealism, has a dark gnomic fatalistic humor and pathos that are like nothing else. Charles Simic, a master of contemporary American poetry, has been translating Popa’s work for more than a quarter century. This revised and greatly expanded edition of Simic’s Popa is a revelation.

This English-only edition does not include the poems in their original language. “Popa’s imaginative journey resembles a Universe passing through a Universe. It has been one of the most exciting things in modern poetry, to watch this journey being made.” —Ted Hughes


“The symbolist poetry of Mr. Popa, a modernist, was widely hailed as the finest in the Serbian language and an artful mix of folk poetry and surrealism. His language was succinct, often aphoristic and elliptical, and it focused on the specific over the abstract.” —The New York Times


"No other Serbian poet sounds like Popa. He was both the product of his time and place and the inventor of his own world." —London Review of Books


"A poet of genuine vision." —Kirkus