Milosz's poems move forward while attending to his past, and deal with how his Lithuania, and Europe at large, maintain their habit of partial memory and forgetting. In these poems, such as the sequence "Lithuania. After Fifty-Two Years", "Wanda" (about the painter Wanda Telakowska), "Sarajevo", "Translating Anna Swir on an Island in the Caribbean", visible worlds exist and sensations of body and soul exist in memory, a living resource and not a nostalgia. Milosz remains aware of suffering but aware too, of the poet's duty to celebrate. "Facing the River" does not have the tone of finality, but of a restless seeking which finds.
- ISBN10 1857541847
- ISBN13 9781857541847
- Publish Date 20 July 1995 (first published 21 March 1995)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 2 September 2010
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Carcanet Press Ltd
- Format Paperback (UK Trade)
- Pages 72
- Language English