Selected Poetry [Paperback]

Winner of the 2020 Read Russia Prize

A new collection of Pushkin's great narrative and lyric verse, translated by Antony Wood

A Penguin Classic

Pushkin's The Bronze Horseman, based on the statue of Peter the Great in Saint Petersburg and the great flood of 1824, is widely considered to be his most successful narrative poem, the second most famous poem in Russian literature after his Eugene Onegin, and notoriously difficult to translate. One of the most influential works in Russian literature, it will appeal to readers of Dostoyevsky's The Double, Andrei Biely's Petersburg, Anna Akhmatova's poetry, and the works of Nikolai Gogol. This new translation, described by Robert Chandler as truly wonderfull, is accompanied here by Pushkin's greatest shorter verses. They range from lyric poetry to narrative verse based on traditional Russian stories of enchanted tsars and magical fish. Together, they show the dazzling range and achievement of Russia's greatest poet.“Selected Poetry is a modest title, yet the book reaches high. It recounts the poet’s life and works; provides compact, sometimes provocative scholarly commentary for each poem; and glosses every term or name or event that readers might query, thus creating a rich literary, historical and cultural context for individual texts. Wood’s lively translations will not elicit any ripostes that the work is flat. On the contrary, they grasp the irrepressible sense of freedom which is the poet’s hallmark ... Pushkin is lucky in Antony Wood. Pleasure is to be found on every page of this book.”
—Times Literary Supplement

“This Selected Poetry by Anthony Wood sulc)