It is not by chance that the great Lithuanian poet Tomas Venclova's only book of poetry published in English appeared with a laudatory introduction by Nobel Laureate Josef Brodsky and concludes with a dialogue between Venclova and Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz. Forms of Hope is a collection of Venclova's literary/political essays and lectures on post-World War II Eastern European cultural matters. Secretly, the book becomes a great moral document, and one of the keys to understanding postwar Europe, with some gentle religious implications. Venclova's work is almost a parable instructing us on the value of mankind and the literary arts.

Exiled from Soviet Lithuania in 1977, Venclova has found his way to Yale and Harvard, where he is a professor of Slavic studies. Some of these essays originally appeared in New York Review of Books and New Republic.