Penguin Book of Russian Poetry

An enchanting collection of the very best of Russian poetry, edited by acclaimed translator Robert Chandler together with poets Boris Dralyuk and Irina Mashinski. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, poetry's pre-eminence in Russia was unchallenged, with Pushkin and his contemporaries ushering in the 'Golden Age' of Russian literature. Prose briefly gained the high ground in the second half of the nineteenth century, but poetry again became dominant in the 'Silver Age' (the early twentieth century), when belief in reason and progress yielded once more to a more magical view of the world. During the Soviet era, poetry became a dangerous, subversive activity; nevertheless, poets such as Osip Mandelstam and Anna Akhmatova continued to defy the censors. This anthology traces Russian poetry from its Golden Age to the modern era, including work by several great poets - Georgy Ivanov and Varlam Shalamov among them - in captivating modern translations by Robert Chandler and others. The volume also includes a general introduction, chronology and individual introductions to each poet. Robert Chandler is an acclaimed poet and translator. His many translations from Russian include works by Aleksandr Pushkin, Nikolay Leskov, Vasily Grossman and Andrey Platonov, while his anthologies of Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida and Russian Magic Tales are both published in Penguin Classics.Irina Mashinski is a bilingual poet and co-founder of the StoSvet literary project. Her most recent collection is 2013's Ophelia i masterok [Ophelia and the Trowel].Boris Dralyuk is a Lecturer in Russian at the University of St Andrews and translator of many books from Russian, including, most recently, Isaac Babel's Red Cavalry (2014).

It is marvellous, This extraordinary anthology has no precedent or peer ... Finally, a comprehensive collection of fine, often extraordinarily fine, translations, with accurate and acute background and critical information ... Robert Chandler and Boris Dralyuk are not just the editors, they are the chief translators, outstanding in their unerring feel for the sense of the original and ways in which the English language can match it ... This book provides a much-needed entry into Russian poetry, This anthology is ambitious - in scope, biographical apparatus and in what it expects of its translators [...] As you read through the names which, great and small, form the 20th century's poetic roll of honour, the introductory biographies (excellent throughout) strike repeatedly gloomy notes of censorship, banishment and worse. Times have changed: the uncensored individual voice has lost authority, and the children of the new Russia have yet to be heard. Anthologies such as this should remind them why their country's poetry once so greatly mattered, A new poetic world ... The editors have used this anthology to open up exciting new horizons. Russian literature, after Stalin, suddenly looks very different. Surely that is what anthologies are for, A stunning anthology. It is a treasure house of poetic riches and a monument to the lives of those who created them

Robert Chandler is an acclaimed poet and translator. His many translations from Russian include works by Aleksandr Pushkin, Nikolay Leskov, Vasily Grossman and Andrey Platonov, while his anthologies of Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida and Russian Magic Tales are both published in Penguin Classics.Irina Mashinski is a bilingual poet and co-founder of the StoSvet literary project. Her most recent collection is 2013's Ophelia i masterok [Ophelia and the Trowel].Boris Dralyuk is a Lecturer in Russian at the University of St Andrews and translator of many books from Russian, including, most recently, Isaac Babel's Red Cavalry (2014).