As I Said: Selected Poems
Lev Loseff author G S Smith translator
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Arc Publications
Published:30th May '12
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

These poems contemplate the poet's native land of Russia, while at the same time casting a jaundiced eye on the alien culture of America, where he spent the final years of his life.
Whether absorbed by the world of literature (particularly his fellow poets) or relating real-life experiences, Loseff conjures up a restless, frequently disturbing universe, full of complex imagery, rich literary allusion and formal experiment.
Lev Loseff was born in 1937, grew up in Leningrad and worked as a journalist in northern Sakhalin, and as a magazine editor and children's playwright. He emigrated to America in 1976, where he later taught Russian literature at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. He died in the USA in 2009.
G.S. Smith was Professor of Russian at the University of Oxford from 1986 to 2003. He translated the bilingual anthology Contemporary Russian Poetry (1993), and worked in collaboration with Lev Loseff for many years.
This book is also available as an ebook: buy it from Amazon here.
"Smith's translations are a labour of love and skill, nowhere better seen than in the palindromic "Toilette" or the many instances of terza rima. Tonally and emotionally, they are perfectly pitched. Such formal and verbal precision reminds us, as does Smith himself in a smartly concise preface, that translation estranges us from the original. Linguistic and prosodic fidelity of the most scrupulous kind are estimable virtues, but the forms of poetry are also the forms of thought and emotion. Poets in the English and American traditions would hear their own thoughts and emotions according to a different music and different traditions. To read Lev Loseff in these brilliant translations is to come as close as possible to hearing Russian poetry in the English language, and that is no mean feat." Andrew Kahn, TLS May 2013
ISBN: 9781904614838
Dimensions: 216mm x 140mm x 9mm
Weight: 220g
158 pages