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.
