This edition is an important contribution to a course on Mandelstam in translation and should find a welcome home in every international poetry collection.

Natalia Vygovskaia
Osip Mandelstam

Osip Mandelstam

Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam (1891–1938), from a Jewish family in Warsaw, grew up in St. Petersburg. After a nomadic life as a translator, he was arrested, sentenced to hard labor, and died in Siberia, leaving behind some of the most glorious poems and essays ever written.

cover image of the book Poems of Osip Mandelstam

Poems of Osip Mandelstam

by Osip Mandelstam

Translated by Peter France

With a contribution by Peter France

Peter France writes in his foreword: “I have always been conscious that Mandelstam was an outstanding figure, arguably the outstanding Russian poet of the twentieth century. This is a personal selection from the poetry — poems that for one reason or another I wanted to translate. I have tried to make it reasonably representative of different strands and periods in his work, with a certain stress on the brilliant and fragmentary Voronezh poems.”

The transparent one still sings to no avail, still swallow, Antigone, beloved girl …

More Information

This edition is an important contribution to a course on Mandelstam in translation and should find a welcome home in every international poetry collection.

Natalia Vygovskaia

Doomed, penetrative brilliance.

Publishers Weekly

Perhaps the most famous Russian poet of the twentieth century.

The Poetry Foundation
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