SOURCE: "Remembering Poland," in The New York Times Book Review, February 16, 1986, pp. 14-15.

In the following excerpt, Hoffman examines Zagajewski's sensuous imagery and abstract insights in Tremor: Selected Poems.

…Adam Zagajewski, who has lived in Paris for the last few years and has emerged as one of the more noted poets of Poland's postwar generation, takes European culture as his native province, even as Mr. Herbert does. Many of his poems are reflections on actual figures—Beethoven, Schubert, Schopenhauer—or on moments in the past. And like Mr. Herbert he finds in civilization and art a solace for the ravages of history. Sometimes his poems seem written in dialogue with Mr. Herbert. The poem "On the Escalator," for example, in which the speaker informs those who are riding up that "no one is waiting / up there," is surely a response to Mr. Herbert's "From the Top of the...