The book by the prominent Lithuanian poet Tomas Venclova (b. 1937) includes selected poems from 1965 to 2015, mainly from the last two and a half decades. Venclova follows the classical line of European poetry.

In the latter half of the 20th century and the early 21st century, this inheritance demanded from the poet—especially a great poet, a ruler of minds—a special humanistic acuity. This acuity contributed to the restoration of the shaken belief in the possibility of continuing tradition and human history itself. This inheritance required the solidarity of individual poetic consciousness with the restless masses to develop a realistic language. In this language, the "primeval word, born in another universe," would simultaneously reflect alongside the "almost disintegrated, cluttered with noise and fury" word of our contemporary.

The book includes translations by Natalia Gorbanevskaya, Anna Gerasimova, Inna Kulishova, Joseph Brodsky, Alexander Kushner, Vitaly Asovsky, Georgy Efremov, Konstantin Rusanov, Alexei Purin, and Sergey Mikhailov.