Exploring the traditional forms of verse of the Indian subcontinent as well as European poets, this study includes essays on the 14th-century Kashmiri saint-poet Lalla, Korean shamanistic songs, Marathi poetry and the experimental work of the late Polish poet Miron Bialoszewski.

Periplus: "the action of sailing round, a voyage (or journey) around a coastline." The translations and commentaries (or travelogues) in this collection represent such a journey. World literature, geographically, ethnically, and historically, is treated as a splendid whole, with contributions by the late A.K. Ramanujan, reworking poems of the fourteenth-century Kashmiri saint-poet Lalla, and Weissbort's and Musial's collaborative translations of the ultra-radical post-War Polish poet Miron Bialoszweski. There are ancient Korean shaman songs and Arun Kolatkar's modern versions of his own Marathi poems. There is a substantial selection by the great revolutionary Hungarian poet Attila Jozsef, as well as translations by the British poet Jon Silkin of poems by the young Japanese writer Toshiko Fujioka. The pioneering work in translation studies of the late James S. Holmes is honored, and Nobel Laureate Joseph Brodsky discourses on "Esthetics, the Mother of Ethics." In short, it is a single journey that is celebrated in Periplus embracing the literary traditions of East--in particular of the Indian subcontinent--and West.