Poetry. Literary Nonfiction. Edited by Katie Farris, Ilya Kaminsky, and Valzhyna Mort. There has been no anthology in English dedicated to the poetics of the great generation of Russian modernists. For a group of poets so widely admired, relatively little seems known about their philosophy of poetry and their poetic influences, and although there is tremendous aesthetic diversity in this group, they have more in common than many readers assume. Russian poetry was a small world, made even smaller by the arrests, ...
Read More
Poetry. Literary Nonfiction. Edited by Katie Farris, Ilya Kaminsky, and Valzhyna Mort. There has been no anthology in English dedicated to the poetics of the great generation of Russian modernists. For a group of poets so widely admired, relatively little seems known about their philosophy of poetry and their poetic influences, and although there is tremendous aesthetic diversity in this group, they have more in common than many readers assume. Russian poetry was a small world, made even smaller by the arrests, disappearances, pogroms, famines, assassinations, and political conflagration of the revolutionary era, and literary differences were often overcome by a mutual sense of historic cataclysm. This anthology's structure is like textile, with many common threads intertwining, doubling back, sometimes unraveling--creating a matrix of poetic conversation: Mayakovsky on Khlebnikov, Pasternak on Mayakovsky, Tsvetaeva on Pasternak, Brodsky on Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova on Mandelstam. Shared themes range from expected (the word) to serendipitous (the ocean). Above all these poets are obsessed with proximity--to God, to nature and place, to poetic predecessors, to language (their own and others), and always, forever, to the inexpressible.
Read Less
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
North Adams. 2014. November 2014. Tupelo Press. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Wrappers. 9781936797479. 306 pages. paperback. keywords: Anthology Literature Russia Translated. FROM THE PUBLISHER-There has been no anthology in English dedicated to the poetics of the great generation of Russian modernists. Russian poetry was a small world, made even smaller by the arrests, disappearances, pogroms, famines, assassinations, and political conflagration of the revolutionary era, and literary differences were often overcome by a mutual sense of historic cataclysm. This anthology's structure creates a matrix of poetic conversation: Mayakovsky on Khlebnikov, Pasternak on Mayakovsky, Tsvetaeva on Pasternak, Brodsky on Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova on Mandelstam. From the expected (the word) to the serendipitous (the ocean), above all these poets are obsessed with proximity-to God, to nature and place, to poetic predecessors, to language (their own and others), and always, forever, to the inexpressible. Featured writers: Anna Akhmatova, Andrei Bely, Joseph Brodsky, Daniil Kharms, Velimir Khlebnikov, Osip Mandelstam, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Boris Pasternak, and Marina Tsvetaeva. inventory #41348.
