Selected Poems. Translated and introduced by George L. Kline, with a foreword by W. H. Auden. (Penguin Modern European Poets)

Joseph BRODSKY

ISBN 10: 0140421645 / ISBN 13: 9780140421644

Published by Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1974

About this Item

Wrappers. First US Penguin edition (first published by Penguin, 1973, first in the US by Harper & Row, 1973), signed by the author on the title-page. "Mr Brodsky is not an easy poet, but even a cursory reading will reveal that, like Van Gogh and Virginia Woolf, he has an extraordinary capacity to envision material objects as sacramental signs, messengers from the unseen . . . After reading Professor Kline's translations, I have no hesitation in declaring that, in Russian, Joseph Brodsky must be a poet of the first order, a man of whom his country should be proud" (W. H. Auden).

Seller Inventory # 36M100065

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Selected Poems. Translated and introduced by George L. Kline, with a foreword by W. H. Auden. (Penguin Modern European Poets)
• Publisher: Baltimore: Penguin Books
• Publication Date: 1974
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140421645
• ISBN 13: 9780140421644
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dimensions: 2.54W x 17.78H x 12.7D centimeters 2.54 centimeters width by 17.78 centimeters height by 12.7 centimeters depth
• Weight: 155 grams
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

Russian-English bilingual edition. Translated by Robert Reid, Daniel Weissbort & Carol Rumens / Yuri Drobyshev. Born in 1935, Evgeny Rein belongs to that tragic generation of Russian poets who for decades went unpublished in the Soviet Union. One of Akhmatova's ""magic choir"" of young Leningrad poets, he was Joseph Brodsky's mentor and lifetime friend. Brodsky figures in many of his poems, and Brodsky's essay on Rein introduces this edition: ""Rein is the most gifted Russian poet of the second half of the 20th century..Rein not only radically extended the poetic vocabulary and sound palette of Russian poetry; he also broadened and shook up the psychological sweep of Russian lyrics. He is an elegist, but of a tragic stripe."" ""Rein is unquestionably an elegiac poet. His main theme is the end of things, the end, to put it more broadly, of a world order that is dear-or at least acceptable-to him. The incarnation of this order in his poetry is the city in which he grew up, the city of Leningrad..Few among his compatriots would dispute the depth of the despair and exhaustion that darkens these poems.""-Joseph Brodsky

About the Author

Evgeny Rein is Russia's greatest living poet. His work was suppressed during the soveit years, and he didn't publish his first book of poems until he was 49.