They were selected and translated to English by James Wright in 1970 from Die Gedichte, which was published in German in 1953.

Each translated poem in this volume appears alongside the original German text.

The poems, and the year they were written, are: Hermann Hesse is best known for his novels, but he was also a poet.

The common thread that runs through the poems in this collection is homesickness.

On the selection of these poems, James Wright wrote in the Translator's Note: "All I wish to do is to offer a selection of Hesse's poems which deal with the single theme of homesickness."