Tomaz Salamun was born in 1941 in Zagreb, Croatia, and raised in Koper, Slovenia. He has published thirty collections of poetry in his home country and has received many prizes and fellowships at home and in the U.S., including a Fulbright and Pushcart Prize. As a young poet Salamun edited Perspektive, a 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. Salamun has won the praise of many poets, including James Tate, Robert Creeley, Robert Hass, who celebrates his "love of the poetics of rebellion," and Jorie Graham, who calls his work "one of Europe's great philosophical wonders."