Zbigniew Herbert

Praise for Selected Poems

He offers what we all need in an age of darkening anxiety and mistrust: a voice of lucid, truly humane observation and integrity. Ethical, often ironical, full of self-doubt; quick, original and vivid.

Ruth Padel

The power of these poems reminds us what language is for; here are lines that do history's heavy lifting, 'offering to the betrayed world a rose'.

Ian McMillan

Herbert’s poems, even in English, seem to me finer than anything currently being written by any English or American poet

The New York Review of Books

He offers what we all need in an age of darkening anxiety and mistrust: a voice of lucid, truly humane observation and integrity. Ethical, often ironical, full of self-doubt; quick, original and vivid.

Ruth Padel

The power of these poems reminds us what language is for; here are lines that do history's heavy lifting, 'offering to the betrayed world a rose'.

Ian McMillan

Herbert’s poems, even in English, seem to me finer than anything currently being written by any English or American poet

The New York Review of Books

He offers what we all need in an age of darkening anxiety and mistrust: a voice of lucid, truly humane observation and integrity. Ethical, often ironical, full of self-doubt; quick, original and vivid.

Ruth Padel

The power of these poems reminds us what language is for; here are lines that do history's heavy lifting, 'offering to the betrayed world a rose'.

Ian McMillan

Herbert’s poems, even in English, seem to me finer than anything currently being written by any English or American poet

The New York Review of Books