Poetry. Poems born in "a time of abrupt needs," this collection catalogs those individual and imperative fancies that, in the cosmos of Tomaz Salamun, eternity aims to replace: A genealogy of dressmakers and songbirds. A biography that locates the poetic "I" as, at once, a primordial being and a tamer of beasts, a monster and a guardian angel. With uncanny and sometimes harrowing grace, Salamun plumbs every reach of the imagination in search of a space where we can delight in and mourn the disintegration of the body. The nine translators who collaborated to bring out this new book by a "major Central European poet" (The New Yorker) include Thomas Kane, Peter Richards, Phillis Levin, Joshua Beckman, Ana Jelnikar, Christopher Merrill, Matthew Rohrer, Brian Henry, and Anselm Hollo.