Birds, Beasts and a World Made New
Guillaume Apollinaire author Velimir Khlebnikov author Robert Chandler translator
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Pushkin Press
Published:15th Aug '24
Should be back in stock very soon
A revelatory volume of two of the twentieth century's great poetic innovators, Guillaume Apollinaire and Velimir Khlebnikov, in vibrant new translations by Robert Chandler
Guillaume Apollinaire and Velimir Khlebnikov never met, but they have much in common. Both inventive luminaries of Modernism, they played a central role in the avant-garde movements of their time and worked closely with the most important visual artists around them. Written with exhilarating freedom and creativity, their verse has continued to inspire poets to the present day.
Acclaimed translator and poet Robert Chandler offers a unique selection from both poets' work in vivid new translations. Showcasing their most direct, heartfelt verse alongside their form-breaking innovations, this volume reveals the deep insight with which these two poets wrote about love, friendship, art, revolution, famine and war.
A wonderful parallel anthology and introduction to two poets, both so much more. They are the short-lived, playful, and visionary greats of Modernism: the Frenchman Guillaume Apollinaire and the Russian Velimir Khlebnikov. The translations are splendid and full of life, the context brisk, plain and simply sketched in. This is a book for discovery, for pleasure and delight -- George Szirtes, author of 'The Photographer at Sixteen'
Recently I've been greatly moved by the war poems of Apollinaire (in Robert Chandler's translations). He finds connections in a bombardment of distractions and manages to be all-embracing in a world that is being blown apart. He attempts love poetry in the shadow of death -- Michael Longley
Guillaume Apollinaire and Velimir Khlebnikov did not know each other, but paired in Birds, Beasts and a World Made New, with commentary by the virtuoso translator Robert Chandler, they light bright flares - of affection, humour, defiance and hope -- Marina Warner * TLS, Books of the Year *
This unique anthology is like a curated museum exhibit... Chandler is a deft and esteemed translator of Russian * Russian Life *
Robert Chandler's juxtaposition of the two poets in Birds, Beasts and a World Made New is an adroit one... Inventiveness abounds in these translations * TLS *
ISBN: 9781782279921
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
272 pages