Jaan Kaplinski is one of the leading poets and essayists in contemporary Estonian literature; his works have gained recognition abroad and have been translated into several languages. Kaplinski belongs to the generation that entered the literary scene in the 1960s, a period of political liberalization in the Soviet Union, which had annexed Estonia in 1940. The 1960s were also a period of radical renewal in Estonian poetry, brought about by a young, better educated, and more sophisticated generation of authors. Kaplinski has been a significant innovator of poetic form and language and has enriched Estonian poetry and widened its range primarily as a result of his knowledge of Far Eastern cultures. As a versatile author, he has also written fiction and drama. Since the end of the 1980s, when the Soviet Union began disintegrating, and especially since 1991, when Estonia regained its independence, Kaplinski's essays have played an important role...