The poetry of Johannes Bobrowski (1917-1965) is recognized as a unique development in the tradition of German poetry. As Michael Hamburger says, `Bobrowski wrote pure poetry, at once modern and rooted in tradition. And yet this difficult, mysterious and undidactic poetry was finally accepted, and widely read, in East Germany too." `From the Rivers" spans the whole corpus of his work, including his last poems. It supplements the Penguin selection (originally published in hardback as `Shadow Land") by the same translators, of which Peter Porter wrote in `The Guardian": `It is the beautiful poems of Bobrowski which establish the Meads as outstanding translators... Without ever straining for effect, he fills his landscape with pointers to its history - the rivers, the hawks, the sky itself hang in his words with exquisite tension... Bobrowski is unlike anyone"s idea of a German poet and the Meads" translations are wonderfully sympathetic."