Few American readers seem to be aware that Hermann Hesse, author of the epic novels "Steppenwolf "and "Siddhartha, " among many others, also wrote poetry, the best of which the poet James Wright has translated and included in this book. This is a special volume--filled with short, direct poems about love, death, loneliness, the seasons--that is imbued with some of the imagery and feeling of Hesse's novels but that has a clarity and resonance all its own, a sense of longing for love and for home that is both deceptively simple and deeply moving.