The Millenniad, Humanity”s Road to Maturity (review)

, preface, foreword, or epilogue, but at the outset it does include a very useful table of contents. All of these deeply stirring, lapidary, tersely concise, quintessentially economical and elegantly expressive poems were written in the poet’s native Serbian and offered here in English translations. Forty poems were translated by their author himself and the remaining forty by eight, in my opinion, equally competent, comparably talented, and scrupulously faithful and responsible scholarly translators. These include Edward Davis (8), Michael Collins (10), Barbara Magee (12), Dwight Stephens (1), Mirjana Matari! (2), Irena Kosti! (1), Milo Yelesiyevich (2), and the writer of this review (4). Familiar with many of these poems from earlier encounters in Serbian, I was delighted to meet again, greet and salute these charmingly captivating and unforgettably striking old friends, whose place of honor together with that of their distinguished, supremely gifted and subtly refined author, has long been assured in Serbian and world literature dealing with this seductively beguiling, strangely evanescent, and dangerously brittle genre. Together with the great and internationally recognized master-poet Jovan Du"i!, Vasa Mihailovich occupies an equally important position. Du"i!’s advantage in pioneering novelty is more than made up for by Mihailovich’s no less outstanding formal polish combined with far greater and much more widely appealing, though always tastefully restrained, emotional openness and human warmth. To all lovers of belle letters, and particularly of soothing gentle and therapeutically smooth, deeply thoughtful, and discreetly compassionate prose poetry, I wholeheartedly recommend this splendind collection of Vasa Mihailovich as his best. The book can be ordered from the author at 821 Emory Drive, Chapel Hill, NC 27517, at the price of $10.