92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center, in collaboration with the Polish Cultural Institute, presented a centennial celebration of Czesław Miłosz, with readings and remembrances by Clare Cavanagh, Robert Hass and Adam Zagajewski in 2011.
This excerpt opens with a recording of Miłosz reading from his poem “Report” (from a 1993 appearance at the Poetry Center) and ends with Zagajewski’s readings of “Yellow Bicycle” and “Mittelbergheim.”
“What distinguishes Miłosz as a poet,” wrote fellow Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, in a recent commemoration published in The Guardian, “is the abundance and spontaneity of the work, his at-homeness in so many different genres and landscapes, his desire for belief and his equally acute skepticism. Chiefly, however, what irradiates the poetry and compels the reader is a quality of wisdom. Everything is carried and feels guaranteed by the voice.”