Shamsur Rahman was described as “the greatest Bengali poet of his generation” in the Guardian (London) obituary penned by William Radice. It is a view widely shared among Bengali readers in both Bangladesh and India. Rahman’s poetry ranges from the personal to the political, the lyrical to the meditative, the modernist to the populist. In this selection the complete range of his poetic achievement is presented to the Anglophone reader in superbly crafted translations that do justice to the poetic merit of the originals.