[The poems in Bells in Winter] give the impression that they have been brought to completion against overwhelming odds. Historical, biographical, and temperamental forces militated against their being written….

No translation ever conveys much of the real poetic power of the original. The poems translated here sound like English, which is in itself a notable achievement. The pity is that they cannot sound like Polish; therefore no decisive conclusions can be reached by the present reviewer about the poems as verbal artifacts. (p. 406)

[It] is suffering and righteous anger that most often inspire Milosz to write. One can infer that he is drawn to a saintly ideal, secular and ascetic, or at most Gnostic….

[The long poem, "From the Rising of the Sun" is] a magisterial work, a summing up of a life at moments grateful and at others agonized. As a whole it constitutes the poet's testament of despair and hope against hope. In the absence of any evidence, he still believes in apokatastasis [restitution]…. Living in the heart of paradox the poet imagines the coming of the millennium…. [He] has suffered, meditated, and written. The task of understanding is not finally his alone. (p. 407)