Crossing Centuries: The New Generation In Russian Poetry

by John High

Poetry. Edited by John High and Vitaly Chernetsky, Thomas Epstein, Lyn Hejinian, Patrick Henry, Gerald Janecek, and Laura Weeks, this anthology traces the course of Russian poetry at perhaps its most crucial moment since the early nineteenth century. CROSSING CENTURIES focuses on transformations in Russian poetry in the last fifty years, with particular attention to the Brezhnev and Gorbachev years and the profound changes in language and values that followed the collapse of the Soviet regime. Translations are by some of the foremost Russian-English translators and distinguished poets of our time; most were prepared especially for this volume. Featuring Nina Iskrenko, Ivan Zhdanov, Arkady Dragomoschenko, Alexei Parshchikov, Mark Shatunovsky, and many others.

509 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2000

Reviews

[Tim Genetti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid book. The essays were enlightening. The poems and translators were partially based on a meeting of poets in 1994. I wish there was more bibliography associated with the poets because I looked up a specific poet and found through a singular personal essay on the internet that the poet and translator had died a few years after the publication. I'm captured by the book knowing of a world view similar to the environment today, unapologetically ambivalent to the strength of a poets words. Little would these poets predict being connected to one another like the roots of a disperse forest due to the internet and plunged head first into a war with their neighbor. I generally think this volume would benefit by attaching the first two chapters, which had names like Primo Levi, with accompanying volume of Brodsky and Akhmatova because these well known poets are mentioned every two sentences. Thus the reader would benefit from a true introduction to the lost names of Russian poets in the 80's 90's and early naughts.