Review of Black Earth: Selected Poems and Prose, by Osip Mandelstam [sic], trans. Peter France

At Rhino.


Teaser quote: It has always seemed to me that English speakers have to take Russian poets on faith a lot—basically whenever the originals are written in rhyme and meter. Most English translators have very little love for old-school prosody, and exclude it entirely from their work, with no sense of loss. If anything, they think they are “freeing these wonderful birds from their cages.”


[originally posted Friday 11 June 2021]