Selected Poems

Description

An acclaimed translation of the best work of the passionate Russian poet

An admired contemporary of Rilke, Akhmatova, and Mandelstam, Marina Tsvetaeva was a witness to the political turmoil and the social devastation wrought by the Russian Revolution and a powerfully inspired chronicler of a difficult life and exile sustained by poetry. Pasternak “was immediately overcome by the immense lyrical power of her poetic form. It… had spring living from experience—personal, and neither narrow-chested nor short of breath from line to line but rich and compact and enveloping”

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Introduction

POEMS

I know the truth
What is this gypsy passion for separation
We shall not escape Hell
Some ancestor of mine
I’m glad your sickness
We are keeping an eye on the girls
No one has taken anything away
You throw back your head
Where does this tenderness come from?
Bent with worry
Today or tomorrow the snow will melt
VERSES ABOUT MOSCOW
From INSOMNIA
POEMS FOR AKHMATOVA
POEMS FOR BLOK
A kiss on the head
From SWANS’ ENCAMPMENT
Yesterday he still looked in my eyes
To Mayakovsky
Praise to the Rich
God help us Smoke!
Ophelia: in Defence of the Queen
Wherever you are I can reach you
From WIRES
Sahara
The Poet
Appointment
Rails
You loved me
It’s not like waiting for post
My ear attends to you
As people listen intently
Strong doesn’t mate with strong
In a world
POEM OF THE MOUNTAIN
POEM OF THE END
An Attempt at Jealousy
To Boris Pasternak

From THE RATCATCHER:
From Chapter 1
From Chapter 2: Dreams
From The Children’s Paradise

From POEMS TO A SON
Homesickness
I opened my veins
Epitaph
Readers of Newspapers
Desk
Bus
When I look at the flight of the leaves
From POEMS TO CZECHOSLOVAKIA

Notes on Working Method: Angela Livingstone
Notes

Marina Tsvetaeva was born in Moscow in 1892, the daughter of a pianist and a museum curator. After enjoying a relatively secure and comfortable childhood, she published her first poems in 1910 and in 1911 married fellow poet Sergei Efron. They had two daughters before the Russian revolution broke out, and it was at that time she began to experience the turmoil and brutality of early twentieth-century Russia. During the years of famine that ensued, she was forced to place her daughters in a State orphanage, where one of them died of malnutrition. Tsvetaeva later followed her husband to Czechoslovakia, where they lived in exile until Efron’s return to Russia in 1937. Efron subsequently was arrested and died in a labor camp. Tsvetaeva returned to Russia with their son in 1939 but was driven to despair by the difficulty of finding food for the both of them, and, in 1941, she hanged herself. Along with Pasternak, Mandelstam, and Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva stands as one of the four great Russian poets of this century and is one of the most important woman writers in the Western canon.

Elaine Feinstein is a prizewinning poet and novelist and the author of highly praised biographies of Alexander Pushkin, Marina Tsvetaeva, and Ted Hughes. She lives in London.US

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