TOMAZ SALAMUN was born in 1941 in Zagreb. He has published more than thirty books of poetry and frequently teaches at American universities.

The work of this eminent, still-wild spirit of Central Europe (Publishers Weekly) continues to electrify. In The Blue Tower, language is remade with tenderness and abandon: Rommel was kissing heavens dainty hands and yet / from his airplane above the Sahara my uncle / Rafko Perhauc still blew him to bits. There is an effervescence and a sense of freedom to Toma Salamuns poetry that has made him an inspiration to successive generations of American poets, a poetic bridge between old European roots and the American adventure (Associated Press). Trivial and monumental, beautiful and grotesque, healing, ferocious, mad: The Blue Tower is an essential volume.