Revered by many American poets, Tomaz Salamun is a leading figure in the Eastern European poetical avant garde. As a young poet he edited Perspektive, the republic's most progressive cultural and political journal. Communist authorities eventually banned the journal's publication, and arrested Salamun. His first two books, Poker (1966) and The Purpose of the Cloak (1968), were released in samizdat, a last resort for censored writers. Since then he has published extensively. Salamun is the winner of the Slovenian National Book Award and has just released his latest collection of his poetry in English translation, The Four Questions of Melancholy (1997). For the past year Tomaz Salamun has served as the Slovenian Cultural Attaché in New York City.