Ferenc Mózsi's poems, inspired by the Biblical verses, selections of which appear at the top of each poem as brief epigrams, consider poetry with the reverence, devotion, and fierce longing uttered by King Solomon's obsessing lovers. At the same time he is able to probe by way of this conceit the nature of the relationship between the contemporary poet and his craft in terms of dualities one associates both with love and the creative imagination: freedom and slavery, willfulness and playfulness, discipline and rebellion, spontaneity and design, dejection and exhilaration.
   The style of these poems revel in their freedom, independent of grammatical shackles, orthography, punctuation, the tyranny of the traditional stanza or the modern albeit institutionalized "work-shop" poem. What Mózsi offers, in their place, is a naturalness akin to nakedness, charged by the same physical and emotive energy as that of the lover of the Songs: "I have taken off my robe, am I then to put it on?" In expressing himself, Mózsi strips his poems of formal elegance, easy ornamentation or lukewarm artifact that is neither sincere nor passionate. (Excerpt from the translator's foreword)

About the poet
 Ferenc Mózsi is the author of thirteen volumes of poetry. He was born in Budapest. He escaped from Communist Hungary in 1970 and lived for a time in Belgium pursuing literary studies at the University of Louvain. In 1974 he moved to the United States and edited the Hungarian critical and artistic review Szivárvány. At the 1984 World Congress of Poetry in Marrakech, Morocco, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Poetry. Ferenc Mózsi lives in Chicago where he is the owner of Sebok Travel Services.

About the translator
 Peter Hargitai is an award-winning translator of Hungarian poetry and an associate member of the Academy of American Poets.