Selected Poems

by Osip Mandelstam

Book Overview

James Greene's acclaimed translations of the poetry of Osip Mandelshtam, now in an extensively revised and augmented edition. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: B000WZKDVE
• Release Date: January 1975
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
• Length: 206 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Great Poet

Reading these poems will make you understand why Mandelstam is so highly regarded. All 50 are well-translated works of genius. It has the best version of his (suicidal) lampoon of Stalin that I have read in translation. Reading these will make you hungry for more of his work.

as good as it gets

It should be said right at the beginning: Mandelstam is perhaps the best 20th century poet. Joseph Brodsky maybe share his place, but Brodsky is also co-author of this book - he wrote great preface for it. This anthology of Mandelstam's poems is not perfect only because it is not a collection of his complete works. However, this is a book which contains some of his best poems. Both Mandelstam and Brodsky are great examples of how true are the verses by Marina Tzvetvaeva: "In this most Christian of all worlds/ All poets are Jews." The perfection of this poetry is an evidence of the fact how great poetry once was - not a long time ago. Unfortunately, today the world have very little poets even close to Mandelstam.