Pencil Letter: Poems (First American Edition)

Irina Ratushinskaya (author); Lyn Coffin; Sergei Shishkoff; Alyona Kojevnikov; David McDuff; Richard McKane; Helen Szamuely; Blake Morrison; Mark Frankland; Alan Myers; Carol Rumens; Yurij Drobyshev; Daniel Weissbort (translators)

ISBN 10: 0394571703 / ISBN 13: 9780394571706

Published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1989

About this Item

First printing of the first American edition. A fine copy in a fine jacket. A clean, tight copy with price ($18.95) intact on front flap. Comes with archival-quality jacket protector. Translated from the Russian. Poetry-R.

Seller Inventory # FLAHIVE-2305

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Pencil Letter: Poems (First American Edition)
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, New York
• Publication Date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0394571703
• ISBN 13: 9780394571706
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Poetry

About this title

Synopsis

The author, who was sent to a labor camp for seven years for writing poetry, shares the poetry she wrote there about hope freedom, memories, and nature

Reviews

Ratushinskaya, who now lives in London, wrote these poems between her arrest for "anti-Soviet agitation" in late 1982 and her release from labor camp four years later. The work is probably best read as an addendum to her gallant and wrenching memoir of the period, Grey Is the Color of Hope ( LJ 10/15/88). Many of her poems are obviously sustained and effective in theme and imagery, and over those years Ratushinskaya seems to have grown considerably as an artist. It's hard to be sure, however: the collection is the work of ten translators whose eclectic versions of individual poems are often mere trots, semantically and syntactically faithful to the original but stuck somewhere in mid-continuum between initial Russian and intended English. Continuity of voice and vocabulary and much poetry is lost in the muddle.
- Mary F. Zirin, Altadena, Cal.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.